Dawn Of The Third Era
by TW1
Summary: Chapter 4 up. Major AU, I really can't sumarise it, Gohan/Videl romance, with a lot of action, an ancient prophecy, 2 original characters(not Mary Sue/Gary Stue) and Z-squad. Slightly longer explanation at the start of Chapter 1.
1. New Boy

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball Z.  
  
Dawn Of The Third Era  
  
Opening notes:  
  
Okay, this is going to be a major AU. The differences start shortly after the Cell games, but most of the fic will be set later.  
  
Warning:  
  
There is going to be a Yaoi, Male/Male relationship in here between two original characters (meaning two characters I made up). This relationship will not become graphic in a sexual sense, however it will be explicitly present in this fic, up to the point of holding hands, and maybe kissing, depending on the circumstances. If this bothers you, you should leave. This relationship will not be the focus of the story, but it will be present at times, the main story line will be, more or less, Gohan/Videl, more or less because there's a hell of a lot more than just romance happening.  
  
Changes:  
  
Goku has put a limit on the time he's going to spend in other world, ten years, and he's kept in touch every now and then.  
  
Gohan hasn't stopped training, for reasons listed below, and is able to go to level three.  
  
Non of the movies, even those that can be made to fit in with the series, happened.  
  
About a year after Cell Z-squad was formed. It basically incoporates the most powerful of the Earth's Z-fighters, Gohan, Vegeta, Piccolo, #18, Krillin, Yamcha, and Tien. As well as Bulma as their technical expert and Chi-Chi and Chaozu who help out with things when it's needed. What exactly Z-squad does will be explained in the fic by Gohan.  
Z-squad has kept them all in training so they're all stronger. Even #18 has gotten a bit stronger because she used to be human and her human side can now train, she can also sense Ki now, thanks to the training of her human half, which has also given her a small, but noticable Ki.  
A lot of the others are loosly associated with Z-squad, like Korrin, who though he isn't officially part of the team keeps growing Senzu-beans on a constant basis so there's always a suply of them, and Dende who helps with the healing when someone is wounded, but on Earth, the reason being that Dende, being Kami, or God, or Guardian, whichever you prefer, of Earth can't come with them while they can take the Senzu-beans anywhere.  
  
Now with no further ado, the story.  
  
Chapter One: New Boy  
  
As their teacher made the announcement that a new boy would be joining their class this year Videl sighed, Erasa squealed, and Sharpner looked disinterested. The thoughts on their minds were about as different as their reactions.  
Videl: 'Oh God another guy to follow me around and hero worship my father. At least I managed to get Erasa between me and Sharpner as a buffer, but I think this one next to me is the only free seat in the room.'  
Erasa: 'Another potential boyfriend you can never have to many of them.'  
Sharpner: 'Probably just another nerd skipping grades, so who cares.'  
  
Quite unaware of the mixed feelings his arrival was causing, Gohan stepped into the classroom. His feelings about being here were anything but mixed. He was glad for several reasons. For one, he was sure he knew everything he was supposed to be learning this year already, from his home studies, and for another he would finally be making some friends his own age. But the most important reason for his positive out look on the situation was normalcy, hopefully he would be able to be just another teenager here, not a warrior, not a Z-fighter, or Z-squad member, not a Super-Saiyan, just Son Gohan age 18.  
"Class." The teacher called to silence the group that had begun whispering as Gohan entered. "This is Son Gohan. Many of you could do with following his example. He got perfect scores on all his entry exams, and even came up with better answers to some of the questions than we had. Why don't you tell us something about yourself son?" He finished, turning to Gohan.  
"Well like Mr. Johnson here said, my name is Gohan, I'm pretty new to this whole school business since I've been homeschooled all my life. Other than that I enjoy reading..." he paused as a few people laughed softly, "and martial arts."  
"There's no way he can do martial arts, he's a nerd." A guy with long blond hair, sitting towards the back of the class, whispered just a bit too loudly.  
Gohan frowned, he was sure the teacher hadn't noticed, but most of his new classmates had and a lot of them were snickering behind their hands.  
"Well," mister Johnson said, looking around, "I'm sure everyone will do their best to make you feel at home here. So if you'd like to take a seat, I believe there's one up there." He pointed to the empty seat next to Videl.  
Gohan nodded and noticed the seat was quite close to the blond guy that had made the remark about him being a martial artist. He immediately decided what to do, and headed towards his seat, walking at first and then suddenly jumping and doing a triple somersault in the air before landing next to it. Mr. Johnson who was looking at some papers on his desk hadn't noticed, but most of the class did, and there were a few gasps of surprise.  
Gohan meanwhile leaned over to the blond. "Three things, first I AM a martial artist, second if you're going to whisper about me please do it softly, I have rather acute hearing, and thirdly I don't enjoy people questioning what I say without reason, so if you feel a need to do so please whisper."  
Gohan then calmly sat down, getting out his book and notepad ready for class to begin.  
  
After a few hours of furiously scribling down notes on various subjects it was finally time for lunch, the first real chance for the students to interact. Gohan was more nervous about lunch than he had been about class, he'd quickly been proven right in class anyway, he'd had all this stuff years ago, but now he was about to have his first real contact with fellow teenagers. Unless you counted Dende, but the young Namek wasn't exactly a normal teenager, especially when you took into consideration that next to being an alien he also happened to be Earth's Kami.  
Of course Gohan wasn't exactly a normal teenager either, being half alien. But he was a lot more like a human teenager than he was like Dende. While this didn't subtract in anyway from his friendship with the young Namek it did leave Gohan feeling a bit isolated.  
It was a beautiful summersday so Gohan made his way outside along with most of the other students, he'd brought a capsule table, the picnic model with attatched seats, and some food, a lot for a human but barele enough for a Saiyan to get through the day, however he wanted to seem normal so he'd have to watch how much he ate.  
Meanwhile Erasa had taken it upon herself to follow Gohan, dragging Sharpner and Videl along with her. Erasa's interest in Gohan was quite clear to both her friends, and even Videl had to admit the boy was cute. While Videl herself didn't feel a particular need to be near Gohan she did follow Erasa to avoid being alone with Sharpner, who of course followed her.  
Videl felt curious when Gohan didn't head over to the bleachers but instead produced a capsule from his pocket. Her surprise lessened some, but remained in part, as a picnic table appeared with food already on it, and a lot of food, at least by her standards.  
  
Gohan was just sitting down and was about to attack his food with his usual Saiyan appetite when the already familiar voice of a certain blond caused him to look up.  
"Mind if we sit with you?" Erasa asked sweetly.  
"Not at all, this thing seats four anyway, or six if you activate the extensions."  
"Extensions?" Videl questioned. "I must say I've never seen this model before, is it new?"  
"Yeah," Gohan replied, "they just hit the market last month, a friend of mine gave me one, as for the extensions..." He reached under the table and pushed a button, making extra seats appear at the head and foot of the table.  
The others sat down, and so conversation started over lunch, the four of them generally getting to know each other better, though Videl was a little withdrawn in this conversation. Erasa noticed this and thought her friend was just being shy so after a while she decided to bring her into the conversation.  
"Say Gohan, why haven't you remarked on Videl's dad yet, or don't you know who he is?"  
"I know who he is." Gohan simply answered. Of course he knew, even though he hated the fraud he knew Videl by sight. He tried to keep up with the news on TV, annoying as it was with a Hercule Satan item every other day.  
"So why haven't you said anything about it?" Sharpner asked, hoping to take Gohan down as any possible form of competition as far as Videl was concerned.  
"Why should I?" Gohan asked.  
"Hello!" Sharpner replied as if he were dealing with some sort of moron. "Her dad's mister Satan, the world champion, the man who saved us all from Cell."  
"And?" Gohan enquired.  
"And... and... and why haven't you said anything about him to his daughter?"  
"Quite simple." Gohan replied. "She isn't the world champion, unless you count the junior devision, and she didn't beat Cell." He paused adding 'Neither did her dad.' in thought before he continued. "So if I wanted to ask her or talk to her about anything it would be the junior tournament, but I didn't because it's my considered opinion that life in the public eye must suck."  
'Well this is strange.' Videl though as she eyed Gohan. 'He's into martial arts, but doesn't make any remarks about my dad, he even seems rather dismissive about the whole thing. I've never had that happen before, everybody is always asking me for autographs of if I can get them free lessons.'  
She was about to make a remark about it when the bell sounded and they got up, waiting for Gohan to capsulate the table again before they headed back to the building.  
  
There was another hour of normal class and then it was time for the last class of the day, PE.  
Videl was certainly looking forward to it, they would be continueing where they'd left off last year which was in martial arts. She wondered a little at how good Gohan would be. He'd said he was into martial arts, and had given at least some prove of it in that triple summersault. But that move, while flashy really wasn't much use in a fight.  
She gulped, fortunately for her inaudibly, when Gohan came out of the locker-room in his PE uniform. School policy was that everyone had to wear the same T-shirt and shorts, both white with Orange stars. On most people it didn't really make a difference but Gohan had been wearing rather concealing clothes all day and now suddenly Videl found herself confronted with his muscular arms and legs. Though she couldn't see under his shirt she was pretty sure that his entire body must be s creation so perfectly sculpted that it would make any renaisance artist jealous. But Gohan of course had been sculpted by nature and in a way probably by himself.  
'Kami.' Videl thought to herself. 'I've never seen anyone under twenty with a body that toned. His muscles aren't too big, unlike Sharpner's, but his whole being just seems to radiate with power when you see him like this.'  
Gohan looked around a bit pained, even Videl was looking at him, but that wasn't too bad, the bad part was all the other girls who were almost literally drooling as they eyed his body with a possessive gleam in their eyes.  
"Attention please!" The coach yelled when everyone had arrived, startling the girls that were busy drooling over Gohan out of their trance like states. "Now we'll be continueing where we left off last year, which was martial arts, but we've got an extra hour today, normally your last hour of the day is history on mondays but today you'll be staying here three hours instead of two. Now mr. Jameson, your history teacher, didn't just give me that hour, he'll be here too and we'll study the use of the Samurai sword and the way the Samurai combined it with martial arts. Anyway you know the drill, first hour you can do whatever you like, lift weights, spar, whatever, and the second hour we'll have a tournament, though I'm sure we all know who's going to win."  
"So Gohan, you say you're a martial artist, want to spar?" Sharpner asked.  
"Why not." Gohan replied. "What rules are we using? Tenkaichi Budoukai(world tournament) rules or something else?"  
"Tenkaichi rules." Sharpner replied after a moments thought. "Half an hour time limit, though I doubt that we'll reach it."  
Gohan nodded, "Okay, I'll just change into my Gi, this T-shirt is to limiting for my arm movements."  
Sharpner stared along with everyone else as Gohan calmly walked to the locker room, getting out a capsule and throwing it just before he got there.  
Videl had half expected a travell bag or some such thing when she saw the capsule but the volume of the 'boom' and the size of the smoke cloud were clear evidence that whatever was in the capsule was much larger. As it turned out this was a storage capsule, but not just any storage capsule, Videl immidiately recognised it as a top of the line safety-storage-capsule. The safe that was now standing there, had multipal compartments, each having its own code and Gohan quickly punched one in.  
All the others could see was something orange as he reached into the compartment opened, then it closed again and Gohan after recapsulating the whole thing and pocketing it proceeded to get changed.  
'I suppose these T-shirts would be to constricting for him.' Videl thought. 'I don't have a problem because I always use one that's a size too large, but I'd just as soon use a gi as well. He must be pretty serious about martial arts though, to carry his gi around with him everywhere, not to mention under such security.'  
  
Gohan returned less than a minute later dressed in the type of Gi his father had always used. Underneath the orange he was wearing a blue T-shirt and on the main Gi were two symbols, his own on the front and Piccolo's on the back.  
"Let's do this." He told Sharpner.  
Sharpner nodded and the two of them got into 'ring' that had been marked out on the floor. It was a lot smaller than the real tournament ring of course, but it still offered a reasonable amount of room and certainly enough room outside it for the other students to all gather around the fight. All of them rather curious to see what this new kid could do.  
  
Gohan smirked just a little as he dropped into his stance. Sharpner's attitude reminded him of Vegeta, but even the prince of Saiyans had become more acceptable to be around over the years, and even back when he was this bad he had a decent punch to back up what he said, but even compared to most non-Z fighters Sharpner wasn't really incredibly strong.  
"Who's keeping time?" Gohan asked, knowing full well that he needed less than a minute which made having someone make sure the 30 minute mark wasn't reached a mute point.  
"I am." Videl said, from her place beside the ring.  
"Time's the last thing you have to worry about." Sharpner stated, trying to send a death-glare at Gohan but not quite managing to pull it off, making him look rather silly. "You'll be out of the ring in no time, I've been trained by mister Satan himself for the last few years, and I've been training since I was 9."  
"Gee, and I thought I'd started late." Gohan replied without thinking.  
"What do you mean by that?" Videl asked. "Even I didn't start until I was 7, so 9 can't be that late."  
"Depends on your point of view I suppose." Gohan replied thoughtfully. "In the end I suppose when you start isn't always the most important thing, but as things are I started training when I was five."  
"And you think that is late?" Videl exclaimed.  
"Compared to most people I know, yes. Most of them started almost as soon as they could walk. I would have too if my mom hadn't insisted she wanted me to be a scholar, my dad bought a set of training weights and a sword for me the day I was born."  
"So how did you start training if your mom was against it?" Videl asked.  
"How I really started is a long story." Gohan replied. "But once I had, my mom realised that I could train without my studies suffering too much so she let me."  
Sharpner apperently couldn't stand the talk anymore and chose that moment to attack while Gohan was still talking to Videl.  
To everyone's surprise, except his own, Gohan managed to bring up a hand to block the punch in time.  
'Kami, how could he block that?' Videl wondered. 'With his face turned this way he couldn't have seen it other than out of the corner of his eye.'  
"That isn't really a fair way to attack Sharpner." Gohan said, his voice so cold it made a lot of people shiver. "Now it just so happens that I have periferal vision and quick reflexes but most other people would have suffered from that foul, and a fight won without honour is a fight you've lost to yourself."  
"I wouldn't lose my honour." Sharpner challenged. "It would serve them right for talking instead of paying attention to the fight."  
"Trust me Sharpner, one doesn't exclude the other." Gohan stated as he attacked, continuing his conversation with Videl as his reflexes fought for him.   
"So anyway, that's when I started training."  
"Exactly how good are you?" Videl asked as she watched him fight, clearly Sharpner wasn't any match, he was loosing without Gohan even focusing on the fight.  
"As good as I need to be." Gohan replied. "Over the years I've learned to fight on reflexes alone, at least with an opponent as predictable as this." At this time he simply kicked Sharpner softly, knocking the boy of balance and sending him to the ground. "See," he continued, explaining, "he was dropping his guard every time he attacked with his left. And that type of carelessness loses you matches." He bend down, lifted Sharpner with ease, and gently tossed the boy out of the ring.  
The crowd fell silent. Sharpner was second only too Videl in the competitions the class had, and yet Gohan seemed to have had little or no trouble defeating him.  
"So Videl, would you like to spar?" Gohan asked.  
"No thanks, I'll go do some warming up by myself, we can save the fight for the tournament next hour, I have a feeling I'll be meeting you somewhere in there, I'd say in the finals depending on where we end up in the draw."  
"Whatever you say Videl, anyone else want to spar."  
Most kids looked a little intimidated but finally one boy stepped forward.  
"I will, if you promise to take it easy on me."  
"Don't worry about it. Sharpner just got on my nerves a little too much."  
"I can understand that, he gets on everybody's nerves a little too much, but with most people he can unfortunately get away with it."  
"You shouldn't overly concern yourself on his behalf, he's not all that tough." Gohan said, his eyes on a corner of the room where Sharpner was talking to some of his buddies, letting Gohan's Saiyan ears catch the phrase "I slipped."  
"Anyway," the boy said, "my name's Steve, but everybody calls me by my last name, Twister."  
"Which do you prefer?" Gohan asked.  
"I prefer Twister. Even my parents call me that nowadays."  
"Alright then Twister, let's see what you can do."  
Gohan dropped into his stance again and watched Twister as he did the same. The other boy was a bit shorter, giving Gohan a sligth hight advantage, though he knew from experience that physical size counted very little. Twister had a rather high Ki for an untrained human, almost as high as Videl's, the only thing stopping this guy from beating Sharpner was probably lack of training and mindset, but Gohan was sure he could take care of that.  
"Okay Twister, you attack first." Gohan said, changing his posture to be more defensive.   
As Twister charged Gohan made sure his Ki was as far down as he could push it. With Sharpner he hadn't really bothered pushing it down, but this boy was different, the whole fight was different, but there was something about Twister that made Gohan consider something entirely different altogether.  
(Yes I'm mean and I'm going to leave you hanging as to what he's considering although part of it will become clear immediately.)  
After blocking a couple of punches Gohan countered slowly, but steadily increasing his pace as Twister was working harder and harder to keep up. Finally a punch made it through and Twister was knocked over.  
"You're not bad." Gohan commented, as Twister got up and brushed himself of. "You could be a lot better though."  
"What do you mean?" Twister asked.  
"From what I can tell you've never really been taught properly. You're reflexes speed and strength are good, but you haven't had enough experience yet to use them to their full potential. If you want I could help you get at least a little better, certainly good enough to beat Sharpner."  
"You mean it?" Twister asked. "Nobody's ever defeated Sharpner except for Videl, and well, you."  
  
When Videl had finished the first part of her warm up excercises she walked back over to the ring to see how Gohan and Twister were doing. To her surprise they weren't fighting, but it looked as though Gohan was teaching Twister. The strange thing was the way he went about this, he'd give instructions every once in a while, but for the rest he almost seemed to be using his body as a living punching bag to let Twister practice. Just as she looked over he was giving some instructions, then he brought up his arms, crossing them at the wrists in a defensive stance as Twister came in with a faster series of kicks and punches than she'd ever seen him produce. There was no room left for doubt as to who'd win if Twister were to fight Sharpner, the blond had clearly been knocked from his second place standing down to fourth.  
  
The 'tournament' in the second hour went quickly, there were only three really interesting matches, the first was Steve a.k.a. Twister, versus Sharpner.  
Sharpner was looking to redeem himself for his loss to Gohan but to his own, and most others' surprise was quickly overwhelmed by Twister, who was putting Gohan's coaching to good use. He and Videl had ended up in one half of the draw and Gohan in the other so the next interresting match again featured Twister, this time against Videl. If people had been surprised by Twister's new found ability to handle Sharpner, or had assumed that Sharpner must be having a bad day they were soon forced to come to the conclusion that whatever that victory had been, it wasn't a fluke. Videl managed to hold her own against Twister, but was having more difficulty than anyone had ever caused her before.  
In the end Videl managed to win by a ring-out but she had to admit that whatever Gohan had done with Twister had worked wonders. And next up on her schedule was a fight with the wonder man himself.  
  
Not surprisingly after the way he'd defeated Sharpner while sparring, Gohan had made his way to the final, where he would face Videl. The others all crowded around the ring, though there was little doubt in any of their minds that Videl would win. Doubt only existed in two minds, while one person knew she was going to loose. That person of course was Gohan, who had already decided that he was going to beat her. The two with doubt were Twister and Videl herself. Sharpner didn't doubt that 'his Videl' would take care of Gohan for him. She was the daughter of Hercule after all.  
While most of the others didn't exactly think along the lines of taking care of him for Sharpner, they were pretty sure the daughter of Hercule was unbeatable.  
Videl herself, didn't know what to think, she'd certainly had more difficulty than she'd bargained for in her fight against Twister and the way Gohan had been training him earlier, the only two possibilities were that Twister had been holding back in his work with Gohan, or that Gohan was even stronger and probably a technically more gifted fighter as well.  
Twister was almost as sure as Gohan on the other boys victory. To his own great surprise his work with Gohan had not only allowed him to take down Sharpner but had actually put him into Videl's league. The fight had probably been the closest fight Videl had ever had, and he knew, he just knew, that Gohan was stronger and better.  
  
Gohan had made up his mind before the fight to show mild superiority from that start and proceded to do so, easily deflecting Videl's attacks and slowing his own down to the point where she could deflect some of them, but not all. Of course the blows that got through were of precisely calculated strength, strong enough to be felt, and to drive her back, but not strong enough to do any real damage, like bruising and basically everything from there on up.  
The gathered students gasped in surprise a couple of times when this happened. Though everybody believed by now that Gohan was a good fighter, nobody had expected him to have such a clear upperhand against Videl.  
Videl herself was having mixed emotions as the fight progressed and she was slowly pushed to the edge of the ring. She didn't like to be defeated, but on the other hand she found the experience of facing a stronger opponent quite refreshing. With her dad refusing to spar with her, saying she was to weak for him to be able to do so without hurting her, this was the first time that had happened in a long time.  
When Gohan ended the fight by dropping to the ground and using an extended leg to sweep hers out from under her, making her fall out of the ring she suddenly realised that this was the first use he'd made of his legs in the whole fight. Well he'd used them to walk of course, but he hadn't used any kicks, and even defended against her kicks just using his hands and arms.  
"So," Videl asked Gohan as he helped her up, "just how good are you?"  
"As good as I want to be." Gohan replied cryptically.  
"And how good is that?" Videl pushed.  
"As good as I am now." Gohan replied, not loosing the cryptic nature of his replies.  
"And how good is that?" Videl kept insisting.  
"Better than you apparently." Gohan replied, ending the discussion.  
  
An awkward silence fell, Gohan had said what he wanted to say and Videl was searching for a good reply, but couldn't really think of any.  
"So," Gohan said, changing the topic to break the silence, "the next hour is going to be about the Samurai sword."  
"Yes, we've been studying Samurai culture and history, so it seems that history and PE have decided to do a joined project of sorts, or should that be of swords." Videl replied, smiling a little at her own joke.  
Gohan allowed himself a chuckle but then a thoughtful look crossed his face. "Ah well," he mumbled, "it can't be helped, I did make a oath."  
"What are you talking about?" Videl asked. "An oath about what?"  
"Oh, did I say that out loud." Gohan said with a slightly confused smile. "I was just thinking, I'll have to get my storage-cap out again."  
"Why?" Videl asked. "Another change of clothes?"  
"I wasn't planning on it, but I do need to get out my own sword."  
"You carry a sword around with you."  
"It's in the capsule so it's not exactly a burden." Gohan shrugged. "My first Sensei gave it to me, it's actually the second one he gave me, I out-grew the first, I got that one when I was five, so it became to short. I once swore an oath that I would not fight or even train with any other sword as long as this one remained intact."  
His face took on an odd expression as he remembered that oath. It had been in battle, not really a major battle but still challenging, mostly because he'd just finished sparring with Vegeta, and didn't have any senzus on him to restore his energy. The strange thing was that the oath had been a promise to his sword, but it seemed a forgivable thing for a thirteen year old, to promise his sword he'd never use another if it got him through the fight. In retrospect he could have fought without a sword just as succesfully, but it had served him well as a confidence boost, he'd been doing a lot of sword training right before that.  
  
Gohan threw his capsule again, and punched in a different code this time, opening another compartment where his sword was stored. A small smile touched his lips as he slung his sword across his back.   
It always brought back the memory of when Piccolo had given it to him, a cold winters day in the 439 area that still saw Gohan outside training. He'd found his first sword, the one that Piccolo had given him when he'd first started training, in his room and was trying to see if he could still use it at least to some effect. Gohan just blindly went through a series of strokes with it when it was suddenly caught by a green hand.  
"Not bad kid." Piccolo had told him. "But don't you think it's getting a little small for you."  
"It is really." He had replied. "Could you give me another?" Piccolo had just nodded and materialised this one. It had seemed a little large to Gohan, and it was a little large compared to him when he was still just a boy, but now it was perfect.  
Automatically he removed it from it's sheath and started going through a few moves, slowly by his standards, and still well within the vision range of the untrained eye, but impressive non the less.  
Suddenly almost on instinct he stopped in mid stroke, leaving the blade just a few inches away from Twister's shocked face.  
Twister was shaking slightly, he had just walked up and was rather surprised by the sudden appearance of this sword in front of his face.  
"Sorry Twister." Gohan apologised. "I didn't see you earlier."  
"It's alright Gohan." Twister said with a wry smile, just as Gohan sheathed his sword again. "At least you stopped before splitting my skull rather than afterwords."  
Gohan just grinned sheepishly before changing the topic. "You did really well against Sharpner and Videl."  
Twister blushed a little and looked down. "You were the one who did well, I was still defeated by Videl in the end."  
"Don't be to hard on yourself. You're already a good fighter and you've had very little real training, just this class and a few pointers from me. I've been doing this since I was five, it's actually really surprising to see how quickly you took in the new stuff I taught you."  
Twister blushed even more and decided it was his turn to change the topic. "Okay, I'd like to introduce you to someone. This is my best friend Justin Frost, but we call him Thaw."  
"Nice to meet you." Gohan said shaking hands with Justin. "Why Thaw, if I may ask?"  
"Twister picked it, he said it was only fair for both of us to have a meteorological phenomenon as a nick name, and we weren't really good friends to start with, so he says I just need a little while to warm up to people. Besides it's a good contrast with my last name."  
"Okay, I take it that like Twister you're more comfortable with your nickname that with your real name."  
"Yeah, I'm just used to being Thaw."  
Gohan nodded.  
  
"So," Thaw asked, "I know you did great work with Twister, but how did you get to be so good at martial arts?"  
"A lot of it, if not too much." Gohan responded simply.  
For a moment he looked like he would go on, but instead he fell silent and a thoughtful expression took over his face.  
'What is it about him?' Videl wondered as she studied his expresion. 'What does he mean by too much martial arts, and why does he seem so serious about it? Not that I'm not serious about martial arts, but this guy seems to think it's a matter of life and death.'  
Soon the moment had passed and was all but forgotten as the conversation turned back to the topics of the day while they waited for the final hour to completely commence.  
In that final hour Videl found herself more and more fascinated by the mystery that was Son Gohan. She'd fought him and knew he was a great martial artist, but even the small demonstration he'd given before hand hadn't prepared her for just how much of an expert swordsman he turned out to be. In fact it seemed as though he wasn't a swordsman at all, he didn't fight with a sword, he made it part of himself when he choose to use it.   
  
The next three weeks passed without any extraordinary incidents. Though Gohan's presence did act as a catalyst for new processes and developments in interpresonal relationships. This let to the distance between Videl and Erasa growing and Gohan, Twister and Thaw suddenly getting a lot closer to Videl. Another effect of this was Sharpner leaving her alone some more since her 'group' now included three people who could kick his butt. The whole process in the end culminated in some switching of seats during the second week. As a result of the switching Gohan and Videl still sitting where they had been sitting, Twister in Erasa's seat and Thaw next to him where Sharpner had been before, while the two blonds were now sitting elsewhere in Twister and Thaw's old seats.   
  
On the friday of the third week something that Gohan had half been expecting to happen eventually happened.  
To everyone's surprise, safe Gohan's because he'd already been able to sense it, there was a knock on the door during physics, the last class of the day.   
Videl was as surprised as the others and felt her surprise increase as the door opened to reveal a short man. Who quickly walked up to the teacher and softly said something, in which Videl could make out the word 'Gohan'.  
Gohan himself had either heard it as well or knew what was going on because he was on his way to the front of the class before the teacher could even say anything.  
Videl kept her eyes locked on Gohan and the short stranger. To her surprise they didn't shake hands, but clasped underarms. After that they started to talk quietly after removing themselves a few paces from the teacher. However she strained her ears she couldn't pick up anything of their conversation. Finally both men nodded and Gohan turned around and headed back to his seat. He was almost halfway back when he turned and yelled the only thing Videl could understand over his shoulder.  
"Get Tien and then come back and wait for me."  
The short man nodded and exited the classroom.  
  
"What was that all about?" Videl asked as Gohan slid back into his seat.  
"It seems a bit of a crisis has come up and needs my attention. I'll have to go see about it right after school." Gohan replied.  
Videl thought about continuing, but she'd already found out that when Gohan answered vaguely trying to get through was not easy. Besides that the lesson continued and she had to pay attention, Thaw might be good at physics, and Gohan was good at anything, but she and Twister knew they really had to pay attention here even with the other two helping them.  
  
Gohan anxiously awaited the bell that would signal the end of the day, he could sense that Krillin was back and waiting, right outside the door, while Tien was waiting outside the building, probably in whatever vehicle they would be using, so he wouldn't draw any attention.  
He got up when the bell rang and could feel his friends eyes on his back as he hurried to the door and down the halls to the outside. Krillin joined up with him as he exited the classroom but he barely acknowledged the shorter man, it wasn't needed, they both knew they knew where the other was and where they were headed.  
  
Videl stared after Gohan as he left and she knew Twister and Thaw beside her were doing the same. They'd never seen Gohan quite like this. They left a little after him, taking a bit more time to get their stuff into their bags and could therefor see Gohan's back as he made his way out of the building. The short man had apparently been waiting right outside their classroom and was now walking next to Gohan, though the two of them barely seemed to acknowledge each other's presence, almost as if they were soldiers who knew that the other was marching next to them even without seeing.  
Outside their transportation was waiting and Videl was only slightly surprised to see that it was a top of the line jet-copter, much like her own model but larger and much faster. The paint job on it was something else though, it was blue as a base colour and had several symbols on the side in gold, but she couldn't make sense of them. The gold paint was so realistic that she briefly wondered if someone had actually inlaid it with gold.  
Both Gohan and his friend got into the back and the jet engines fired before they'd even closed the hatch, allowing the three of them one last glimpse at Gohan as he pushed the button to close it.  
"I wonder what's going on." Videl muttered.  
"Yeah, I suppose we'll have to wait until Gohan gets back to find out though." Twister said. "But whatever this is, it shows for certain what we've probably all suspected since we first met Gohan: there is more to him than meets the eye."  
Videl and Thaw both nodded as the three of the looked at the jetcopter that was now about to dissappear over the western horizon.  
  
End Of Chapter One  
  
Please Review 


	2. Stories

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball Z.  
  
Response to Reviews:  
  
To Lord-RawnBlade:  
Glad you liked it, you got the first review, hope the bomb didn't explode at an inconvenient time. ;)  
  
To Jer:  
Gohan is pretty different than he is in the series and I am putting rather a lot of pressure on him, even for a Saiyan. But we don't even get to the full extend of it yet in this chapter.  
  
To Ice Angel:  
For someone who didn't know anything else to say other than you were hooked you managed a reasonable amount. In all honesty this fic was sort of designed to hook you, by keeping the audience in the dark about a lot of things, you don't even find out what Z-squad actually does until the end of this chapter.  
I hope I'm doing a good job on the OCs they often don't work for me either because their either insignificant flat characters or their Mary Sues/Gary Stues, very good and powerful characters based on the author, not all of them are bad but I've seen a lot that were in the various fanfics I've read. I'm trying to stay clear of that and keep all of my OCs well written. As for where the next chapter is, here, now you can go wait for number three.   
I agree with you on Gohan, he's better when he's like this, more like his younger self also I think. Too many fanfics, at least for my tastes, have a weak Gohan who cowers in a corner as soon as Videl so much as glares at him, I try to keep the two of them on a more even footing where it comes to strength of character.  
Anyway I'll end this now and let you read the real story.  
  
To Godrin:  
Glad you like it, thanks for the review, hope you enjoy this chapter as well.  
  
To Loki Drauga:  
Glad you like it. I don't think I can update more often though, chapter 1 was over six thousand words, and this one is just a shade under 5000, not counting the responses to reviews. It takes a while to write that much, this one in fact is coming out unusually fast. Hope you'll enjoy it non-the-less.  
  
Dawn Of The Third Era  
  
Chapter Two: Stories  
  
Videl had arrived at school early this Monday morning and was now staring at the classroom door from her seat. There were three faces she was waiting to see, but one more so than the others. To the best of her knowledge nobody had seen Gohan for the past nine days, and the seat on her left had been depressingly empty for the five schooldays he'd been gone.   
She knew there was no real use in what she was doing, coming early to sit here like this. Gohan was never late, but he was also never early, he was just on time, usually arriving about two or three minutes before the bell would sound. But still she at least felt like she was doing something when she was here.  
As she'd expected Twister and Thaw showed up around the same time, people were so predictable, those two always arrived about five minutes before the lessons started. The three of them exchanged greetings and then resumed the observation of the doorway in triplicate.   
All three of them felt strangely surprised when Gohan appeared. They'd been expecting him to show up everyday for the last week, and yet now that he did show it had become unexpected. Even within the space of a week the unfulfilled wait had become the expected pattern for the start of the day.  
"Where were you last week?" Videl asked as he slid into his seat, not bothering with any formalities.  
  
"Officially I was sick." Gohan replied.  
"Officially?" Videl questioned, raising an eyebrow.  
"Sometimes you have to tell people you don't want to tell the truth something." He replied.  
"Okay, but then where were you really?"  
"I'm afraid this is neither the time nor the place for me to answer that question." Gohan said softly. "For one its answer is only for you three to know and for another thing it's entirely to long to fit inside two minutes, because that answer also means I have to explain why I was there and that, believe it or not, will include almost my entire life's story."  
Videl just nodded, if it was a long story this certainly wasn't the time for it, and his privacy was important, after all she too had her little secrets.  
  
The day passed quickly and soon it was time for PE, the last class today because mister Phillips, the history teacher, was sick and no substitute had been found.  
Gohan, Thaw and Twister were just about to walk out of the locker room next to each other when Gohan suddenly stopped and jerked upright. Twister was about to ask why when his body relaxed again and a smile touched his lips.  
'I wonder why they're here.' He thought, while preparing himself for what was about to happen.  
Sure enough a scream of "Nii-chan" erupted the instant he stepped out into the hallway. Immediately followed by a "Hi Gohan" as Goten and Trunks saw him.  
He couldn't help but smile a little wider as the chibis came running towards him.  
"Hey squirts, what are you doing here?"  
"Well mom is kind of mad at us..." Goten started.  
"And my mom." Trunks added.  
"So we thought we'd wait here for a while." Goten finished.  
"What did you guys do this time?" Gohan asked, knowing their talent for getting into trouble.  
"We were sparring in the gravity room with my dad..." Trunks started.  
"and it blew up." Goten finished.  
For a moment Gohan was thankful that nobody was within human hearing range, he'd have a lot of explaining to do if anyone had overheard the terms 'gravity room' and 'blew up' coming from two chibis.  
"Well I'll have to ask the coach, but maybe you can stay here for PE, that's the last thing I have anyway."  
"Thank you nii-chan."  
"Don't worry about it squirt. A couple of hours should give mom and Bulma a chance to settle down a little."  
"Thanks Gohan." Trunks added.  
"Don't mention it." Gohan said, as Twister and Thaw walked up with Videl, who they'd gone to get when the chibis showed up.  
"Now." Gohan said. "Going up." He held out his hands on either side and Goten and Trunks each grabbed hold of one. In a routine gesture Gohan raised his arms lifting up both chibis and then turned and lowered again slightly. Depositing a chibi on each shoulder after they'd swung from his hands for a while.  
  
"Hey Gohan." Videl said just as his hands were released again. "Who are the chibis?"  
"Oh, this is my little brother Goten." Gohan stated, pointing to his right shoulder where he'd deposited the black-haired boy. "And this," he continued, "is his best friend Trunks Brief."  
"Brief, as in Bulma Brief?" Twister asked in shock.  
"She's my mom." Trunks replied from his seat on Gohan's shoulder.  
Gohan couldn't help but smirk as his three friends almost fainted in surprise.  
'I guess I can't blame them for being surprised.' He thought. 'After all very few people can actually claim to really know Bulma, too many people just want to get to know her for her wealth. And the Vegeta factor doesn't exactly help to expand her circle of friends either, but then we've always been a rather small group.'  
"You know Bulma Brief?" Videl asked, turning to Gohan.  
"Have since I was about five." Gohan answered, with a slight hint of a 'what's the big deal' feeling in spite of his knowledge of Bulma's fame. "She's a friend of the family."  
"Wow!" Videl exclaimed. "She's even richer than my dad."  
To her surprise Gohan just shrugged, making the chibis, who were actually shrugging as well themselves, bounce a little on his shoulders.  
"I'd better go, I'll have to talk to the coach before the lesson starts." Gohan said, turning and continuing on his way.  
  
  
"Coach, can I have a minute?" Gohan asked.  
"Sure what is it Gohan." The coach turned around and promptly blinked when he saw Gohan with Goten and Trunks still on his shoulders. "What's with the chibis?"  
"Oh, this is my little brother, Goten and this is his friend Trunks." Gohan said, raising his shoulders in turn to lightly bounce the chibis by way of indication. "They're here as refugees."  
"Refugees?" The coach questioned.  
"Yeah, their moms are kind of angry at them right now, and I was wondering if we could grant them temporary asylum here for the next couple of hours, then I can take them home afterwards and their moms will have had a chance to calm down a bit."  
"Okay, they can stay if they behave themselves."  
"They will, they're usually pretty well behaved, they just anger their moms sometimes, but at their age, who can blame them." Gohan said.   
"Like I said, they can stay if they behave."  
"Thanks, and I'll see you in couple of minutes when class starts."  
// A/N Gohan is right, I'm not turning Trunks and Goten into unholy terrors in this fic. Also Goten isn't really stupid, a little too innocent perhaps, like Goku, but not completely clueless.  
  
Just before entering the gym where the rest of the students were Gohan paused to talk to Goten and Trunks. He didn't want to raise to many eyebrows before his talk with his three friends later, at least not by too much. After all trying to explain something to people who'd already formed a different theory themselves was difficult and poor information was more dangerous than complete information, it lead to too many assumptions and theories.  
  
"You guys." He whispered. "When we go in there I want you to drop your Ki to this level," he lowered his own Ki a great deal though it was still well above any of his classmates', "and be careful, most of these humans are pretty fragile."  
'Fragile.' He thought to himself. 'I'm making my classmates sound like their made of glass, but by our standards they might as well be and I don't want to use the word weak, weakness is a state of mind, nothing more. Even the powerless can be strong.'  
He was vaguely aware that both kids had agreed as he was thinking and had now indeed lowered their Ki, so he opened the door and stepped in.  
"Oh," he quickly whispered, "before I forget, no flying or Ki-blasts."  
He could sense the two of them nodding and smiled in relief as they joined the rest of the group.  
  
  
As Gohan had half expected and even feared a little the two chibis immediately drew everyone's attention to him.  
"Going down guys." He said, raising his hands again so they could grab hold and repeating the process he'd used to put them up there in reverse.  
"What are we going to do here nii-chan?" Goten asked.  
"Well this is PE Goten, and right now we're doing martial arts, so the first hour we'll spar and after that a tournament."  
"Cool, can we be in the tournament?" Trunks asked.  
"I'm not sure, but you can certainly spar with me. We'll have a two on one sparring match okay?"  
"Yay!" The chibis shouted in chorus.   
They didn't get to spar with Gohan as much as they'd like. He tried to spar with them as much as he could, but with school, his own training and Z-squad all taking up time it wasn't nearly as much as they'd like.  
"Okay, let me go talk to a couple of people for a few moments and then we can get started." Gohan told them, before walking over to his three friends with the two chibis in his wake.  
"Hey Gohan." Twister greeted his friend as he walked up. "I take it they're allowed to stay."  
"Yeah, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. If you don't mind I'll skip our usual spar, I promised Goten and Trunks I'd go two on one with them."  
"No, I don't mind. How good are those two anyway?"  
"Good, they've been training since they could walk. I think you'll be surprised."  
"Come on." Trunks said, tugging on Gohan's hand. "Let's just show him."  
"You're on Trunks." Gohan replied smiling, heading over to the marked out ring. "Tenkaichi rules, so ring out or knock out wins. You guys are fighting as a team, if I get one of you out he stays out but the other keeps fighting."  
The chibis both nodded and Gohan took position in the centre of the ring as they positioned themselves in two of the corners opposite each other.  
"Twister," Gohan called to his friend, "can you give us a countdown to start?"  
"Sure Gohan." Twister replied. "5... 4... 3... 2... 1... and Go."  
Videl, Twister and Thaw were watching as the fight started and felt their jaws drop.   
  
Gohan jumped backwards as the kids rushed towards him. He knew he couldn't make any mistakes, with the Ki limit the chibis had a slight advantage in that department, as there were two of them, but he could make up for it with physical strength and experience.  
The class watched on in amazement as Goten and Trunks attacked. Gohan's initial backward dodge bought him some time but soon he was blocking various incoming punches and kicks.  
  
The strange part was that not even Videl or Twister could usually get this many attacks in when fighting Gohan. And while he still seemed to be able to block against both kids, some people were starting to wonder if Videl or Twister would be able to handle one of these chibis.  
The spar went on, virtually level for about fifteen minutes before Gohan managed to get the upper hand. He'd been right when he'd expected a challenge and had fought flawlessly for a quarter of an hour but so had Goten and Trunks, which had left them almost exactly equal. But now they were both starting to show signs of tiring, not so much physically as mentally. Gohan couldn't blame them, he was starting to feel the strain of concentrating on every little detail himself. Not too mention the strain caused by the use of original solutions they always had to think up in mid-battle, such as Gohan standing on one hand and using the other to block Trunks while he used both his legs as pincers to grab Goten and throw him a little.  
Gohan however was more or less used to this, his spars with Vegeta could last for several hours and real battles often lasted longer. Though in most battles he could fight at his full power and had a decisive advantage that way.  
Now he had good use for that greater mental stamina as both chibis started making small mistakes every now and then, not quite keeping up their guard or attacking in ways that had no hope of success at all.  
With a series of kicks and punches Gohan managed to create an opening that allowed him to push Trunks out of the ring. Leaving only his little brother. Goten however was clearly intend on fighting to the bitter end and used a momentary lapse in Gohan's guard that occurred as he pushed Trunks out to his advantage, kicking Gohan hard in the stomach.  
Gohan doubled over slightly in pain. With his Ki this low he couldn't use it for his protection and his physical strength, while sufficient to make even Videl and Twister's blows feel like mere pinpricks, wasn't enough to protect him from Goten at this even level.  
Gohan reacted on instinct, using the opening Goten's attack had left to punch his brother, slightly harder than he would have liked, and then pushing him out of the ring as well.  
There was some applause before the group that had gathered to watch dispersed and Gohan walked over to the two chibis who were still panting and attempting to catch their breath.  
He too had to put a little effort into catching his breath and then rubbed his side, which still stung a little from Goten's attack.  
Goten looked over to his big brother with concern.  
"Are you okay nii-chan?" He asked quietly. "I'm sorry if I hurt you."  
"I'm fine Goten." Gohan said, seeing his brother was worried. "It stings a little right now, but I doubt there'll be a bruise. Don't worry about it, I've been hurt a hundred times worse and I've always come out fine."  
"Are you sure nii-chan?" Goten insisted.  
Gohan smiled and lifted his little brother, seating him on one arm. "I'm fine squirt. I hope I didn't hit you too hard though."  
"I'm fine nii-chan, it just stung a little at first, but I don't even feel it anymore." Goten said, pressing against his brother in a quick hug.  
"It's just the same for me Goten, it just stung a little."  
Goten nodded and Gohan put him back down, smiling at his little brother's back as Goten ran off to join Trunks.  
  
The rest of PE was rather uneventful. Goten and Trunks didn't participate in the tournament so they had to make do with cheering for Gohan from the sidelines, urging him on even though they knew he could easily win.  
After the lesson was over Gohan took the two kids home, telling his three friends to wait for him near school so they could talk as soon as he got back.  
  
When Gohan returned about thirty minutes after leaving to drop off Goten and Trunks the others were waiting for him in front of the school building.   
"Hey guys." He greeted.  
"Hi Gohan." Twister responded on behalf of the group.  
"Let's get going, fortunately this place is on the edge of town so we can be in the forest in a couple of minutes, there's a clearing where we can talk in private not far from here."  
"But why all this secrecy Gohan?" Videl asked.  
"Videl, what I'm about to tell you three will be my life's story and more, my most intimate secrets as well as several secrets that aren't fully my own. All in all most of what you're about to hear is known to only a handful of people, in some cases a few dozen. And most of it is kept from outsiders for good reason."  
"You make it sound like you have some kind of big secret." Thaw said.  
"You have no idea how big, but then I suppose we all have our secrets."  
"What do you mean?" Videl asked.  
"What I said, we all have our secrets, in my case it's what you've been guessing at and what I'm about to tell you."  
Videl nodded, it made sense.  
When they'd arrived at the clearing Gohan sat down in the grass and the other three sat down as well, facing him as they sat beside each other opposite him.  
Videl took the opportunity to study Gohan as he sat down, apparently trying to gather his thoughts before speaking.   
'There's something strange about him.' She thought. 'I can't quite put my finger on it but he looks... I don't know, tired and almost old in a strange way.'  
She watched as Gohan ran both hands down his face and then let out a sigh.  
"Let's get started." He said quietly, sounding tired. "I suppose it's time you knew everything. But before I could tell you anything about my life's story there are things you should know before hand. Most importantly that Ki is not a trick, but very real indeed."  
"Ki?" Videl questioned.  
"Energy, life force." Gohan explained. "I've heard what your dad had to say about it over the years and he's sadly mistaken, so sadly that I doubt he believes himself. It's not light shows and tricks, it's not using wires to fly it's a simple matter of energy, concentration and control." To illustrate his point he hovered up until he was about a foot of the ground and did a short Ki-flare around his body, but that only lasted for a few seconds.  
"How did you do that?" Videl asked.  
"It's just using Ki, to me, flying is as natural as walking for longer distances, I've been doing it since I was six anyway."  
"But," Videl said slowly as he brain processed this new information, "if that isn't a trick how did my dad beat Cell?"  
Gohan sighed, he'd feared she might ask that but he'd accepted that risk when he'd started down this path.  
"He didn't." He answered still speaking softly. "No offence Videl but your dad couldn't even beat you, much less Cell."  
"And how would you know?" Videl asked, a bit defensive even though she'd always had her doubts about her father's 'victory'.  
"I was there." Gohan's voice actually dropped further almost to a whisper. "The camera's never saw me in my normal form, only while I was powered up, but I was there, I believe I'm still known to the world only as 'the delivery boy'. Not that I mind, I never wanted fame anyway."  
"So if you were there, do you know who really killed Cell?"  
"I did."  
The other three almost fainted as Gohan said this, he looked so calm, and sounded so sincere from his position a foot above the ground that they found themselves quite easily believing him, but the statement still shook their worlds.  
Finally Videl broke the silence. "You said something about powered up, does that have something to do with the delivery boy being blond, and if so why do you turn blond when 'powered up'?"  
Gohan nodded. "I was blond back then, still am whenever I power up. But why it turns me blond I can only partly explain."  
"So could you teach me, uhm, us, to do that?" Videl said, referring to Twister and herself.  
Gohan shook his head. "No, you couldn't learn how to do that, at this point in time there are only 4 people alive that can do it, and no others that could learn, you see the ability is genetic and doesn't exist in the Human race."  
"Are you telling me you're not Human!?" Videl yelled.  
"In a way, I'm only half Human, my mom's Human, my dad was Saiyan."  
"What's a Saiyan?"  
"The Saiyans were a race of warriors from planet Vegeta. Were because the planet was destroyed, along with all Saiyans safe 4, one of them was my dad.  
I'm afraid the Saiyans weren't very nice, to put it politely, they worked for the evil lord Frieza as part of his gang of planet pirates. Purging planets of all life and then selling them to the highest bidder. My dad was sent to earth on such a mission, as there was a potential buyer for the planet, but he forgot his mission and became one of Earth's greatest warriors. I'll spare you the details but from the time I was about five and half on we learned of his true origin. One of the three other remaining Saiyans came to Earth then to try to get my dad to join them but he was killed. That wasn't the end of our troubles however, the two others were on their way to earth to destroy it, or rather its people, leaving us just a year to get ready."  
Gohan realised he was in danger of just rambling on but he didn't care he barely breathed and just went on.  
"My dad had died along with the other Saiyan but we knew we could wish him back with the Dragon Balls, he chose to remain in other world for a year though so he could train there under King Kai, one of other world's greatest masters of the martial arts.  
In the mean time we started to get ready on Earth, and Piccolo, then one of my dad's worst enemies took it upon himself to train me. He didn't particularly care about Earth, but wanted to rule it himself and couldn't do so if the Saiyans destroyed it.  
For six months he just abandoned me in the wild, with nothing but my clothes and a sword, and only one order: 'Live', just live that was all I had to do. I succeeded and in the end escaped from him. I actually made it to just a few hundred feet from my house when I realised that if I didn't train we might not have a chance, so in sight of home I turned and ran to start training with Piccolo in earnest.  
I was six and a half when the Saiyans came and the battle started. We'd made a small mistake on the timing of wishing back my dad so it would take a while for him to get to Earth, meaning that we had to hold of the Saiyans until then. But I'm afraid I didn't really play my part in the battle, if I had it might have gone a lot different."  
He needed to breath again but continued before any of his friends could even start to form a sentence, his talk still hurried.  
"The battle scared me and I couldn't move. In the end when I was attacked my sensei Piccolo sacrificed his life to save me. That's when I grew angry, I released all of my strength in a single attack but it wasn't enough, it was three times as strong as any of the others' attacks had been but it still wasn't enough. Just then, when things looked very grim indeed my dad made it back. He in the end managed to beat the two other Saiyans though his friend Krillin and I helped as well. And even Yajirobi helped some.  
At the end of the battle my dad was severely wounded and Krillin and I were slightly hurt. But most importantly Piccolo was dead and so the Dragon Balls were gone."  
He continued to explain about his adventures in the same fashion, talking quickly all through the trip to Namek, about Garlic Jr. about his dad's return and Frieza's attempted revenge, about Mirai Trunks and the warning from the future and about the androids and Cell finally stopping his non stop talking after he'd finished his account of the Cell-games.  
There, after the Cell-games a long silence fell. Gohan was trying to deal with all the memories coming back while the others tried to deal with what they'd just heard.  
  
It took almost fifteen minutes for Twister to recover enough to break the silence.  
"Why didn't you ever say something?" He asked. "I mean after Hercule to credit for beating Cell."  
"Believe it or not I didn't find out what happened until a few months after. My dad asked not to be wished back to life for the next ten years and while I knew he'd be back eventually I still felt it was my fault, if I'd finished Cell the first chance I had he wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself and there would have been no need to wish him back. I guess you could say I was depressed for a few weeks, and then we found out my mom was pregnant so I was spending most of my time helping her. All in all it was only after Goten was born that I took the time to sit down and piece together what had happened. And since then I've been too busy to do anything about it. Between trying to be both a big brother and surrogate father to Goten, trying to keep up my studies and my training and the formation of Z-squad I had very little time for the next year or so, and then when I planned to do something about it at the 24th Tenkaichi Budoukai as luck would have it I was needed elsewhere for Z-squad."  
"One question," Videl said, "what is Z-squad?"  
"The fighters on this world that can use Ki are referred to and refer to themselves as Z-fighters, Z-warriors or Z-senshi. And that is exactly what Z-squad is, that group of friends. More importantly we are the single strongest fighting unit in the galaxy and since our formation six years ago we've been trying to maintain some level of status quo and peace in the universe."  
"Why?" Videl asked, feeling as if she'd lost the capacity to be surprised.  
"Two reasons really, there are races out there that seek to dominate others and that might in time threaten Earth. And even today they threaten many innocent races, most of which don't have the power to defend themselves, we do have the power so we help them.  
More importantly the second era of the universe is passing and the trial to start the third era is coming. The third era should span into eternity as an era of everlasting peace. But whether it will come about is still uncertain, and though I don't feel like explaining the entire Prophecy to you I can say that if the Lord of Darkness were to find many strong allies there is a chance that no force will be able to stop him and if that should happen and I quote:   
'If the Lord of Darkness should find strong allies upon his return to the universe all will be lost. For such an alliance would ensure the downfall of the Lord of Light and the eventual fall of the universe, when it will be sucked into the never ending blackness of the third dimension.'  
So you see we have good reason to fight those who seek to conquer for their own evil purposes."  
"I see." Videl said. "But what is this prophecy, and to get back to your original story, what exactly are Dragon Balls?"  
"To answer the first question, the prophecy is a text written at the beginning of the first Era of the universe that tells of the conditions for the start of the third Era, the Era of peace.  
As for the Dragon Balls, that's a bit harder for me to explain, as I don't fully understand it myself. In short however any member of the Namek race has the power to create Dragon Balls. They first need seven stone balls and a Dragon model and then through some unique power they can fuse the two and an eternal Dragon is born. The eternal Dragon then has the power to grand many wishes, though its power is limited by that of its creator. But it can bring back the dead or grand immortality, at this point in time 2 sets of Dragon Balls exist, 1 set of seven here on Earth, and the other seven on New Namek, the world the Nameks settled on after Frieza had destroyed the original planet Namek."  
The others nodded and Twister was about to speak when a streak of fire could be seen across the sky and an impact crater was formed with a loud 'boom'.  
  
End Of Chapter Two 


	3. Aliens

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball Z.  
  
Response to Reviews:  
  
To Sorceress Fujin:  
Thanks for the review. Here's MORE!!!!!!!!!!!!  
  
To vsd2oc:  
I hope you'll still be reading after this chapter, we're losing our innocence, they're holding hands now, I think the worlds going to end. Seriously though I can understand your hesitance. I tend to avoid straight NC-17 or otherwise skip over the NC-17 scenes. Anyway, I'm glad you started in spite of your hesitance and like it.   
Gohan and Videl should end up as a couple, somewhere in the future, but this is probably going to be another novel length fic. And I still need to finish up Life is Strange * sighs *.  
Glad you like the prophecy, not too much more on that front in here, but some interesting other developments. Prophecy will hopefully be fully explained by chapter six or so, but I don't think I'll make it by next chapter, maybe in chapter five if I'm lucky.  
Something really weird must have happened when you were posting your review though I think I got it about six or seven times.  
  
To Ice Angel:  
I agree on the evil cliffhangers, they're so evil I'm not doing it, but as this is my story... Anyway we get to see even more of Gohan's leadership qualities in this chapter, but I won't keep you any longer, just go and read it.  
  
To Shin Vegeta:  
Well Gohan is what you could call OOC, the last 7 years have been completely different so his character and most other characters are slightly different.  
  
To Jer:  
If I keep up this pace of updating Gohan probably won't be the only one working overtime :), but anyway I'm glad you like it.  
  
To ~*Crystal Lily*~:  
The fire is just the glow caused by the heat and friction as the space pod enters the atmosphere.  
  
Dawn Of The Third Era  
  
Chapter Three: Aliens  
  
Gohan quickly flew over to where the space pod had hit, only a few hundred yards away. Of course the other three wanted to know what was going on as well and so they made their way over to it on foot.  
"Kuso." Gohan muttered under his breath as he saw the pod and recognised its markings, the markings of the Zeldan[1] army.  
Briefly he wondered how it could have made it to Earth but that wasn't important now, as the pod was opening and a Zeldan getting out, the blue skin and green hair unmistakable even in the fading evening light.  
  
He quickly landed in front of his friends and powered up to Super-Saiyan, using the extra energy to create a Ki-shield around them, just as they were recovering from the initial shock of seeing an alien.  
When they had recovered Thaw looked at Gohan and tentatively asked the question that was on his mind as well as on Videl's and Twister's:  
"Gohan, what is he?"  
  
"A Zeldan." Gohan answered, not taking his eyes of the alien. "They're the reason I was gone last week, they tried to invade Kerlon prime so we had to go there and stop them, apparently this one wants revenge."  
The Zeldan then said something in a tongue Videl, Twister and Thaw didn't understand, and Gohan answered him, speaking the same language.  
The blue man then fired a blast that created an impressive lightshow as it hit the Ki-shield and Gohan countered, dropping the shield only the last instant before he attacked, by rushing forward forming a ball of Ki in one hand.  
His attack was quite simple, he smacked his open hand, Ki-ball and all into the alien's face, reducing the man's career options to acting and limiting that career to the role of a headless corpse all in one go.  
Videl was about to ask what happened when Gohan produced a small rectangular object from one of his pockets and pushed a button on it. As she looked closer she could see there was something like a speaker or a microphone or maybe both on it so she wasn't too surprised when he started to talk into it:  
"This is Star, I repeat, this is Star, with a code red, I repeat code red transmission to all units, please report."  
A moment of silence passed before there was a sputter and voices started coming out of the speaker, rapidly following each other.  
A female voice: "This is Whiz, signing in."  
Then a deep male voice: "Prince standing by and it'd better be important brat."  
A somewhat lighter male voice: "Disc standing by."  
Another woman: "18 signing in."  
A guy again: "Bandit standing by."  
  
A very boyish voice: "Emperor here, ready to receive."  
Another deep male voice: "This is Guard, I'm waiting Star."  
A woman again: "439-base here, standing by."  
And another guy: "Ma Jr. here, why on earth can't you contact me telepathically?"[2]  
Gohan sighed. "We've been over this before, if I contact you telepathically I have to tell you everything, and then tell the others, and then tell you what the others said and tell the others what you said and..."  
"Fine just get this over with."  
"Alright. Now Whiz, what's the status of the planetary Ki-detection grid and the object collision detection grid?"  
"They're both down for some maintenance, because of that meteor shower yesterday most of our satellites took damage or had to be taken out of position why do you ask?"  
"Because I have a dead Zeldan army captain at my feet and I didn't invite him, so we may have more unwelcome company on the way."  
"All right, I'll try to get the grids up as soon as possible."  
"Good in the mean time could you launch a couple of wide range scan probes, and hide them in the Kuyper-belt, at least that way we'll have some warning if this guy turns out to be just an advance scout for a much larger group."  
"You got it."  
"Good."  
"Say brat." Videl recognised the voice and choice of words as the guy introduced as prince. "I think we should treat this as if there were an invasion force on the way, at least for the time being."  
"You're right, let's see, Prince you take the area around the western capital and watch it. Ma Jr., take the north. 18 You've got the south, and Disc, Guard and Bandit take the east. I'll stay here near the centre of things. Especially since I'm with three friends and I think they could be THE three."  
The others shot him surprised and confused looks at his emphasis on the word THE as gasps came from his communicator.  
"You're sure?" Vegeta, a.k.a. Prince asked.  
"Not quite yet." Gohan responded truthfully. "But I'd say over 90% so it's imperative that they survive this, you all know what will happen if they don't."  
A small chorus of agreeing noises and then a question from Krillin a.k.a. Disc.  
"Any idea why that Zeldan showed up?"  
"Two possibilities, he's a hard-line loner or someone has gotten the foolish idea to attempt to attack us while we're home again. It's happened before, but I kind of thought we'd put a stop to it just about permanently after the Dolxins'[3] attempt a few years ago. On the other hand we did do a couple of things that might have upset the Zeldan high command last week, so maybe someone snapped."  
Yamcha a.k.a. Bandit chuckled. "Just a couple of things? I think this was their 10th attempt to invade another planet, just this year. And it also was the 10th time we've stopped them this year, of course they're upset."  
Gohan chuckled a little himself and then decided to end it.  
"Alright, we all know what we've got to do, everybody stay in place and on your guard until we get confirmation that the probes are working."  
Another chorus of agreeing noises and then he switched it off.  
  
A silence fell again, this time lasting only a couple of minutes until Gohan spoke up.  
"If it's possible I'd like the three of you to stay in one location tonight, so it'll be easier for me to keep an eye on you. And I don't doubt you will want to talk amongst yourselves about all of this."  
"Sure we can all stay at my place." Videl said. "Dad doesn't really care one way or the other whether I have guests."  
"What did you mean when you said you thought we were THE three." Thaw asked, stressing the word THE as Gohan had earlier.  
"That would take too long to explain." Gohan said. "And I've given you enough to think and talk about, without explaining the entire prophecy to you. But in a nutshell the three have an important part to play."  
Thaw nodded. All three of them knew he was right, their whole vision of reality had just been drastically altered, they didn't need more to think about. Less to think about sooner than more.  
  
A few hours later Videl, Twister and Thaw were sitting on the floor in Videl's room. They'd turned of the light and so the moon[4] and stars shining in through the window where the only source of light. They'd been talking virtually non-stop since they arrived there about fifteen minutes after Gohan's revelations. Videl had asked one of the maids to bring dinner up for the three of them and so they'd talked between bites and sips during dinner.   
When dinner was finished they'd just continued talking, keeping some water near at hand, to protect themselves from the otherwise inevitable dry throats.  
They were just starting to talk about the day's own events, when there was a knock on the window as the light grew dimmer.  
Videl turned to look at it and immediately recognised Gohan who was apparently floating outside. She walked over to open it.  
"Hey Gohan."  
"Hey guys, just thought I should let you know the scanner probes are in place so everything should be safe. If there are any others coming I'll come over here."  
"Why don't you stay for a while?" Videl asked. "I think we'd all like to ask you some more questions."  
"Why not. Just tell me if you want me to leave again."  
"We will."  
Gohan nodded and flew inside completely, landing crossed legged near the others.  
Videl closed the window again and sat back down herself, aware of the interruption in their conversation Gohan's arrival had created.  
"Do you mind if I ask you something Gohan?" She asked.  
"You just did, but I don't mind questions, I'm sure all three of you have plenty of them."  
"Alright then, why did you tell us all of this? Just because we're your friends?"  
"Partly, if you were just close friends I might have waited longer, but if you are the three I don't have the luxury of waiting. There are various reasons for that, but let's not get into the prophecy before we have to."  
Videl nodded as Twister asked the next question.  
"I hope you don't mind my asking, but from your story your life's been pretty miserable all the way through, yet you seem pretty happy most of the time, how is that?"  
"You just get used to it I suppose." Gohan replied after a moment's thought. "I've been fighting life and death battles since I was 5 or 6, depending on what you take as the starting moment. I'd killed by my seventh birthday, in self-defence of course, but I'd still killed. Over the years I learned to shut away my battle 'persona' as it were, though I rarely lose a certain amount of heightened observation. I guess that might be another reason I told you everything, I figured it was fair since I'd already discovered your secrets, at least a lot of them, and I could have had them all if I wanted to."  
"You could?"  
'Yes.' To the others' surprise Gohan's voice didn't come out loud but in their heads. 'Telepathy does take a lot out of me, certainly when I'm sending to a non-telepath, or several like now, but reading people's minds is relatively easy, if and when I so desire. When they're telepaths themselves it becomes different because they can block. And it would still be a strain, even with you, I don't specialise in telepathy and so this is more tiring for me than just normal fighting.'  
"Wow." Videl whispered. "I suppose you could find out someone's secrets like that."  
"It's actually pretty difficult, it's easy to read current thought, but to force someone to think of something takes even more power than a normal broadcast, and more still if you want to do it undetected. And like I said, I haven't used it to read you guys yet, I've grown quite skilled at observing all the little things that can give away thoughts and feelings over the years."  
"Well I must say I'm quite amazed." Thaw said. "I just hope we're not going to have nightmares about everything when we go to our rooms later."  
Gohan smirked a little. "Why don't you just get it over with and say room." He stated.  
"What do you mean?" Thaw asked in surprise.  
"Come on, I just told you I'm good at seeing the little things, you honestly think I hadn't figured out you and Twister were a couple yet, let me just give you a run down on what I noticed.  
For both of you your pupils tend to dilate slightly when you're looking at each other, and you tend to blush just a tiny bit whenever the other uses an even remotely suggestive word. You also tend to sometimes look at the other and unconsciously lick your lips and finally you sometimes hold hands when you think Videl and I won't see."  
"I uhm, we, uhm." Twister stuttered as both he and Thaw blushed so fiercely it was visible by the moonlight.  
"Relax guys." Gohan told them. "I don't mind and I'm sure Videl doesn't either."  
"Of course I don't I sort of suspected it myself." Videl said. "I may not be as observant as Gohan, but I thought I saw you two holding hands once too. I wasn't sure but I've had my suspicions since then."  
Twister and Thaw looked at each other and the burst out laughing.  
"And all this time," Twister managed to say between laughs, "we've been worried about whether or not to come out to you two."  
"Well now you are out."  
"Yeah I guess we are." Thaw said, taking Twister's hand. "It's kinda nice to be able to do this around others."  
"Not to interrupt or anything." Gohan said. "But I think we got side-tracked. Do any of you have any more questions?"  
"I have one." Videl said. "You've mentioned the prophecy a couple of times, and how we're linked to it, are you linked to it?"  
Gohan thought for a moment as he didn't want to give away too much yet, but didn't want to lie either. "Yes." He finally said. "And while I will say again that now is not the time for me to explain the entire prophecy to you, I will tell you this, the choice of the three befalls me according to its words."  
"What do you mean 'the choice of the three'?" Videl asked.  
"There are three, and only three. Through several things we know they are from Earth, it isn't mentioned in the prophecy, but it is indirectly implied. Any three people from Earth could be the three. But the three just existing is not enough, they must be selected, and the right three must be selected, there will be only one chance to undo any mistake. To go short, the task of selecting the three is mine and if they aren't selected correctly they will not be able to play their part in the prophecy."  
Videl nodded, she knew it would be pointless to ask what that part was, Gohan clearly wasn't going to tell them that yet.  
Gohan let out a yawn. "Sorry." He apologised. "But I'm a bit tired, didn't get to sleep much last week. Too busy fighting the Zeldans."  
  
"I guess we're all pretty tired by now." Videl remarked, stifling a yawn of her own. "Today has been pretty intense."  
Twister and Thaw both nodded their agreement and Videl decided this was as good a time as any to call it a night.  
"I think it's about time for all of us to sleep." She stated. "Would you like to stay here as well Gohan?"  
"No thanks." Gohan said. "I can fly home in just a couple of minutes anyway. So I'll see you guys tomorrow."  
A short exchange of good-byes followed and then Gohan opened the window and flew out again, heading for the 439 mountain area.  
  
Gohan arrived at his usual time of two minutes before the bell sounded the next day so there was little time for the four friends to talk. Not to mention the lack of privacy in the already nearly filled classroom.  
As usual he unpacked his supplies in relative silence, but to the others' surprise he also lay his communicator on the desk as well as a printout consisting of strange symbols they couldn't make heads or tales of.  
"What is that?" Videl whispered pointing at it.  
"A report from our allies on New Namek." Gohan whispered back. "It's in Namekian of course."  
Videl nodded as the bell rang, signalling the start of the lessons.  
  
  
About thirty minutes after class had started everyone was surprised, if not startled, by a series of beeps. Gohan immediately clicked his communicator and responded.  
"Star here, what's the emergency?"  
"This is Whiz." Bulma's voice replied from the communicator. "We still don't have the detection grids up but we just got a signal from one of the scout probes. We've got a wave of pods coming in, estimated time to arrival two minutes. We're not sure yet but it looks like they're aiming for the Satan City area."  
"Matches up with standard Zeldan attack protocol. They would aim for my location."  
"Okay, just keep up your guard, should I send any of the others to your location?"  
"No I can handle it. How many pods are we talking about any way?"  
"Looks like maybe a dozen."  
"Okay, tell the others to get to their designated areas and stay on guard, a couple of them may break off from the main group on entering the atmosphere."  
"Okay, contact us if you need any help or if you've got any orders."  
"Roger that but I think I'll manage, on second thoughts, THE three are with me, so tell Disc to get over here."  
"I will, it'll take a while though, since he's still at Kame-Island."  
"I can take care of myself until he gets here, but send him, just to be safe."  
"Okay."  
Before Gohan could even reply there was a beep to indicate that Bulma had switched off.  
"Gohan what..." The teacher started to ask before being overpowered by a roar that filled that sky.  
"Can't talk now!" Gohan yelled. Pocketing his communicator, opening a window and preparing to fly out in an instant. "We've got incoming!"  
Then in a move that surprised everyone, except for Videl, Twister and Thaw, he flew out of the window and onto the sports fields as ten streaks of fire headed towards him.  
  
Gohan had started to power-up the instant he took to the air and transformed into a Super-Saiyan shortly after landing. Behind him the class gasped in surprise, but he was only vaguely aware of it. The pods looked like they were headed for this location and he couldn't allow them to hit the OSH buildings. Powering up even further to just below the level two barrier he focused his energy, forming it into a shield that surrounded the entire building.  
As he knew they would the pods bounced of the shield to hit the ground not too far in front of him, hitting some of the sports fields and the edge of the woods beyond.  
Gohan dropped the shield, it was too large and took too much energy to be used in a fight. Instead he rushed forward, hoping to take the fight away from the school that way.  
Meanwhile the pods were opening and the Zeldans were stepping out into the open. Gohan groaned as he saw a patch of metal on the back of one of their hands, they were cyborgs.  
The Zeldans had been experimenting with this technology recently, and it was now something that worked almost like a cross between the cyborg technology used to reconstruct Frieza and the sort of android technology that Dr. Gero had used on #17 en #18, though fortunately these guys were nowhere near as strong as #18 yet.  
However with 10 of them even he had to be on his guard. Especially since he had to try to keep all the other students safe as well, and right now they weren't making it easier. The whole school seemed to be spilling out onto the fields behind him.  
Gohan came to a halt as the leader of the enemy unit approached him.  
"We claim this world in the name of the Zeldan Empire." He told Gohan, in Zeldan of course. "Leave now or we will destroy you."  
Gohan just laughed. "Perhaps the sleep in your pods has affected your brains." He countered in Zeldan. "Or perhaps you are terribly misinformed and do not know about me, either way you will soon discover that I have more power than the ten of you combined."  
The enemy leader, a major, as Gohan now saw from the insignia on his wristbands, looked just a little scared so clearly he knew who he was dealing with.   
The fighting soon started and Gohan let the Zeldans attack first, three of them rushed towards him at once but he quickly disposed of them with three blasts that left them unconscious. The others now looked mad and so Gohan decided to power up further, taking himself into level two.  
Six of the others attacked him and he fought with them for a while realising, almost too late that one of them was now heading for the other students. Gohan let out a loud "Kuso!" and pushed himself even further, his hair growing out as he went Super-Saiyan level 3, while flying after the Zeldan.  
Only a fraction of a second before the Zeldan would have reached the others, who he clearly viewed as potential hostages, Gohan caught up with him, seizing him and throwing him backwards, into the other aliens who were pursuing.  
Gohan himself came to a halt in the air, only inches removed from Videl who was at the front of the group of students. As soon as he'd stopped he turned in the air, not even bothering to land and sent out a series of Ki-blasts, completely vaporising all remaining Zeldans.  
Finally he landed again and dropped his power, going down through level 2 back to level 1 Super-Saiyan where he held, just in case.  
  
'Too bad Krillin couldn't get here on time.' Gohan thought. 'This way I can't leave here to see what's happening else where, should any others come I have to be ready.'  
Standing behind Gohan, Videl was about to ask a question when all of a sudden another alien appeared right in front of Gohan, seemingly out of nowhere. Videl looked around and noticed a group of about 50 of these aliens standing on the field perhaps thirty feet away.  
Immediately she looked them over. They were short, about her height, which was short by Human standards, and their skin was a purplish pink. Their hair was short and of a very deep purple colour, almost bordering on black and their eyes appeared to be purple also, other than that they looked more or less Human, except for pointed ears and ridges on the backs of their hands.[5]  
They were all dressed identically apparently in uniform, which consisted of what looked like a black Gi, similar in model to the one Gohan always used and a cape over it, also in black. The one that had appeared directly in front of Gohan was the only one that stood out in anyway, other than of course their individual faces, as he had not two, like all the others, but three golden stars on his left shoulder.  
She was just starting to wonder whether there would be another fight when the alien directly in front of Gohan dropped on one knee, his right knee on the ground and his right hand touching the ground in front of it. His left hand he brought up behind his back, placing it there with the palm turned up as he bowed his head so he looked down before speaking.  
"Lord Gohan."  
Videl heard gasps around her and wasn't even sure whether or not she'd gasped herself, but Gohan seemed to be taking the whole thing in a stride.  
"Rise Sosumi." He told the alien.  
"Your lordship remembers me?" Sosumi asked, seemingly awed, as he got up.  
"Of course." Gohan said with a smile. "Not twice has Yana[6] circled since our last encounter. And I would not forget the Colonel of the seventh battalion of the imperial guard in so short a time. I doubt that I could forget you even if Yardrat itself were to circle a hundred times since our meeting. Though I do not know whether I will live to see the day it has."  
Sosumi nodded. "Yes, my lord, in the times that are coming non know how long they shall live."  
"You speak wisely as always Sosumi, but why are you here?"  
"Your lordship, I am here under orders from prince Asron. Two nights ago we received word from the 99th battalion that the Zeldan's might be plotting to attack Earth. The prince was sure that our presence here could be of use."  
A smile touched Gohan's lips. "My brother knows me well. Though even with the improved training I'm not sure if you and your men will be a match for the Zeldans. However if only in the interest of safety I'm glad you are here. And I thank you."  
"Your gratitude is a reward we can neither hope for nor deserve, we are only following orders."  
"You under estimate yourself colonel, your voice ways heavily even in the highest circles. And you do deserve my thanks, and more, you and your men are knowingly taking a grave risk."  
Sosumi looked like he was about to reply when Krillin arrived.  
"Sorry it took so long." The short man apologised as he landed. "But I ran into a Zeldan on the way here."  
"It's okay Krillin, I managed without you and we've been sent some more back-up." Gohan said, indicating the Yardrat troops. "Allow me to make some introductions. Colonel Sosumi, of the imperial guard's seventh battalion, my friend Krillin, a fellow Z-squad member. And while I'm at it." He turned and beckoned Videl, Twister and Thaw who stepped forward rather hesitantly. "Krillin, Colonel, allow me to introduce three friends of mine, Videl, Twister and Thaw. Guys, this is Krillin and this is Colonel Sosumi, but you'd probably heard that already."  
A short exchange of greetings followed before Sosumi turned to Gohan. "Three, as in THE three?"  
"I think so." Gohan replied. "Though it still amazes me that your ancient texts spoke of them as well. I have not yet had time to explain the prophecy to them though."  
"The explanation doesn't matter." Krillin said. "Their survival does."  
"Yes." Gohan agreed. "So Krillin, and Sosumi, this goes for you and your men as well. I want you to do whatever you can to protect them, with your lives if necessary, and as a special request to you Colonel, should it look like the defence may fail, get yourself and your men out of here, and take the three of them with you. Bring them to Yardrat, to my quarters in the palace and inform Asron and King Yardos of the situation."  
"So you don't think this is over yet?" Krillin said, worried.  
"No, you generally don't get about a dozen Zeldan hardliners all organising in a single coordinated assault, there is a larger force on the way."  
"Hai." Sosumi stated. "The 99th battalion spoke of the departure from Zeldan prime of 30 pods and 2 battleships."  
"The 99th?" Krillin asked.  
"There are only 50 battalions in the imperial guard." Gohan said. "But the 99th is the codename for the Yardrat military intelligence."  
"If I might make a request." Sosumi said, a little hesitantly. "Could your lordship inspect the troops? I think it would be good for morale."  
"Of course." Gohan said with a smile. "You just watch things here and I'll go inside to get into my uniform. I can't very well inspect the troops out of uniform can I?"  
  
"Of course your lordship. We will watch things here." Sosumi immediately replied.  
"Sure I'll keep an eye out bro." Krillin added.  
Gohan nodded and headed into the building, passing the group of still stunned students to get to the locker rooms.  
  
An excited whisper broke out in the group of students shortly after Gohan had entered the school. People were starting to recover from the shock, and questions were starting to form in their minds, especially among the members of Gohan's class.  
Who exactly was this Son Gohan? Videl, Twister and Thaw seemed to know at least some more about him, but they too were now whispering together so it seemed they didn't know everything either. And what was with all the aliens?  
  
Videl, Twister and Thaw, while indeed more knowledgeable than most were feeling a little frustrated. Somehow every other alien to pop up seemed to know about them while they themselves didn't know, and this whole matter wasn't doing anything to clear up their image of Gohan either. Thaw made a remark about Sosumi speaking of a prince, and Gohan referring his brother in reply, but if Gohan was half Saiyan and half Human as he claimed, how could he be a prince to these Yardrat? Or at the very least have a brother who was their prince?  
Finally after some discussion they decided that Videl would ask him about it when he came back.  
It turned out they didn't have to wait long as only moments later Gohan emerged again from the building, dressed in a Yardrat uniform, with four stars on the shoulder. What caught their eye most though was the crown he was wearing though. It seemed to be made of silver and was made up of heavenly bodies, the main band around his head consisted of a planet, placed centrally on his forehead, and what seemed like four moons, two on either side of it. The back moons were linked to planets again, one planet on either temple, and finally the back of it consisted of just a band of silver running through Gohan's still light gold locks. Above the planet on his forehead was the last feature of this crown, a star with a large precious stone, quite similar to a Sapphire, though clearly different and probably of extra terrestrial origin set in it.  
Videl, Twister and Thaw, and even Krillin were simply in awe as they saw Gohan like this. The whole look of the black uniform, elegant in all its simplicity and the crown seemed to make Gohan look even more imposing and powerful than normal. It seemed as though the symbols revealed the side of himself he normally kept hidden even better than his power up did. The uniform somehow emphasised his prowess in battle, and the crown his ability, and power as a leader of men.  
  
End of Chapter Three  
  
[1] Zeldan is my name for Zarbon's race.  
  
[2] Codenames:   
Star - Gohan (Short for four-star, the dragon ball that goes with the name)  
Whiz - Bulma  
Prince - Vegeta  
Disc - Krillin  
18 - #18 (She didn't want to bother with a codename)  
Bandit - Yamcha  
Emperor - Chaozu  
Guard - Tien (He's Chaozu's body-guard)  
439-base - Chi-Chi (She's their home base in the 439 mountain area)  
Ma Jr. - Piccolo (His standard alternative name)  
  
  
[3] Dolxin my name for Dodoria's race.  
  
[4] The moon was wished back at some point, but in such a way that it's rays don't allow Saiyans to transform, even when it's full.  
  
[5] As you're about to find out, if you've skipped right down when you saw this, these are Yardrat, as some of you may also realise they look different than they do in the brief flash we see of them in the series, one of the episodes where Goku has just returned during the Trunks Saga, but I'm using them for a substantially larger role so I've adapted their looks and culture to serve my own purposes, what they inherit mostly from the series is the Instant Transmission and some of the basic, purplish pink colouration.  
  
[6] Yana is planet Yardrat's largest moon. 


	4. Battle

Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball Z.  
  
Response to Reviews:  
  
To Ice Angel:  
I'm glad you like, to be honest, I'm not even sure how I come up with all the ideas sometimes. Other than that I bow down humbly to your praise.  
  
To Jer:  
Don't worry, his princeliness is explained, though he is technically still a prince of the Ox-kingdom you were right when you thought I wasn't refering to that. Anyway I'm glad you like it.  
  
To vsd2oc:  
Wow, if you keep going like that you'll run out of adjectives. This Zeldan invasion isn't looking for THE three specifically yet but they are in danger of course. Other than that I find myself forced to bow down humbly again.  
  
To Lord-RawnBlade:  
Glad you like it, thanks for the review.  
  
To Crystal Lily:  
The whole prince thing is explained in this chapter, the prophecy hopefully in chapter 5 or 6.  
  
Dawn Of The Third Era  
  
Chapter Four: Battle  
  
Gohan walked up to the others as the whispers of the rest of the school died down. Some people actually tried to step back as he made his way past. The entire image he was portraying seemingly making them want to clear the way, even though it was already clear.  
"Impressive outfit Gohan." Krillin remarked. "And an impressive response from the population."  
Gohan laughed slightly. "You think THIS is impressive, I can remember the one time I made the mistake of strolling into the largest mall in the capital on Yardrat in full uniform. Literally everybody started pointing, then muttering and then bowing. But the really strange part was when some kids came up and asked me to sign the boxes of their Prince Gohan action figures."  
"I think you mentioned those once before." Krillin said thoughtfully.  
"I might have, it's just weird to be an action figure."  
Sosumi smiled, he knew it wasn't actually his place, but he and Gohan had always been on more or less friendly terms, so he couldn't resist jumping in. "He's not just an action figure." He told Krillin. "Last year he was the best selling action figure. Both on Yardrat and in our two colonies. With prince Asron coming in a close second."  
"You just had to mention that didn't you?" Gohan muttered under his breath.  
Sosumi just grinned slightly and nodded.  
"Oh well, let's inspect the troops, now that I've gotten all dressed up anyway."  
"Very well my lord." Sosumi said, immediately falling back into his role as a soldier.  
The colonel then walked over to his men to stand next to the still perfectly aligned battalion. Expanding the first of its five rows from ten to eleven men wide.  
Gohan then slowly walked up to the Yardrat. Starting near Sosumi, who he saluted by bringing two closed fists together in front of him. Sosumi responded by falling into the one knee salute again, but got back up when Gohan again brought his hands together with a loud smack.  
The colonel then left formation to walk behind and slightly to the right of Gohan as he continued his way along the first line. Inspecting the soldiers before turning and walking in between the first and second line, inspecting the second, and so on past the third and fourth, until finally the fifth line had been inspected.  
The two men then slowly walked up to the front of the group and Sosumi smiled as he heard Gohan mutter, "I hate speeches" under his breath. The young demi-Saiyan's hatred for speeches however did not mean that he couldn't give a decent one, in Yardrat of course.  
  
"What's he saying?" Videl asked Krillin as Gohan started to speak.  
"I'm not sure." The short man replied. "I'm not that good at Yardrat, Gohan's the one that's good with languages anyway. But I think it's something about the men of the seventh battalion. Well that makes sense this is the seventh battalion. And now he's saying something about thanking them, and I think something about a war ...ago, I guess long ago. Ah yes this one I know 'Only death without honour is defeat and a worthy cause brings honour', it's a bit shorter in Yardrat but that's what it translates as, it's their motto before battle."  
Videl nodded a bit dumbly. "You say Gohan is good with languages how many does he speak?" She asked.  
"I'm not sure." Krillin replied. "Most Earth languages, and then there's, Namek, Yardrat, Kerlon, Saiyan, though that's virtually a dead language, and he understands Trint, but doesn't speak it well, then again who can blame him, the entire Trint language is sung, and the note at which a syllable is sung and it's precise length down to the quarter second can alter the meaning of a word or sentence. Anyway, he speaks Galactic standard and the old Cold-empire standard, the latter because a lot off our enemies still use it, the former because 90% of all space-farers speak it, and he speaks Dolxin and Zeldan, two enemy languages. He probably speaks more than that, but I don't know about all of them."  
Videl faintly nodded. The way the list had just come out startled her, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for people to speak a handful of alien languages.  
In the mean time Gohan had finished his speech, and the seventh battalion had finished cheering so he walked over to his friends again.  
"Hey guys." He greeted, trying to sound casual.  
"Hey Gohan." Twister replied. "What's with the crown?"  
"Yardrat military code, all members of the royal family are required to wear their crown when in uniform."  
"Okay, next question." Thaw jumped in. "How did you get to be a member of their royal family, I thought you said you were half Human and half Saiyan, but I didn't hear you mention Yardrat."  
"True, I'm not a member of the Royal family by birth. But there is a Yardrat custom known as the brother-oath. When I met crown prince Asron, almost 5 years ago now, he and I went through several adventures together and in the end we took the oath. I'd saved his life, so according to the customs of the Royal family his sister was to be offered to me in marriage, or he himself should I prefer. The only way out of the clause is the brother-oath, the oath-takers become brothers and also take on each others families, so his parents are now my parents, just as much as my parents are my parents, just like his sister is now my sister, which means I can't marry her because that would be incest. I could have turned down the offer of course, but that would be rather insulting. Mind you his sister was just 2 years old at the time, she's about Goten's age, I think they might have a little crush on each other."  
"But isn't Goten her brother as well?" Thaw asked again.  
"No, the two oath-takers take on each others family and are taken on by each others family, but the families do not completely mix. But never the less it does make me the son of the King, and therefore the second prince of the Yardrat Empire."  
"So if the King and the Crown prince die you would be leader of an alien empire?" Videl wanted to know.  
"In theory yes." Gohan answered. "But I already decided as soon as the oath had been taken that if she were to survive I would abdicate immediately in favour of Nasya, my 'sister' and if all three of them were dead, there probably wouldn't be much of an empire left. It's not that big now, just the home world Yardrat and two colonies. The crown symbolises it, Yardrat in the centre, it's four moons, two on either side, the two colonies on the temples and Yardrat's sun high on the forehead."  
"Still seems like a lot to me." Videl commented.  
"It is one of the larger Empires around." Gohan said. "After the Cold-empire collapsed most inhabited planets started to strife for independence, we helped them. That leaves only the Zeldans and the Dolxins as former Cold-empire powers and they helped us along a bit at first, by destroying a lot of bases on otherwise uninhabited planets as they tried to take control of them away from each other. And of course we've stopped them from gaining any new colonies. So they've both been reduced to their home world and a colony. The Trint-alliance is another of our allies and probably the only larger 'Empire' in this quadrant of the galaxy, with three colonies. But the Trint colonies are semi-independent, though all military matters are taken care of by the home world. Most other policies are free so they don't call it an alliance for nothing."  
Videl nodded, feeling a little strange. Somehow the ease with which Gohan discussed galactic politics just didn't go with her feelings but then she'd only had confirmation of the existence of aliens yesterday.  
Now that a short pause had fallen in their conversation one of their teachers, mrs. Williams, walked up somewhat wearily while the other teachers and students edged closer to try and listen in on the conversation.  
"Gohan? Could you explain what is going on here?" She asked, sounding partly scared and partly hopeful.  
"Of course." Gohan answered politely. "The blue green guys that showed up earlier were Zeldans, they're an alien race bend on conquest and they kind of hate my guts, as well as most of my friends' guts.   
Must be something to do with that fact that we've stopped every invasion they attempted for the last 6 years, but I digress. Anyway it looks like they got it into their heads to try and attack us at home. Stupid move if ever there was one, but they aren't known for being the brightest race in the galaxy. At present we've had the first wave of their attack, but we're expecting more." He paused and turned to Sosumi asking "How many did the 99th say again?"  
"Two battleships and approximately thirty pods, your lordship." The Colonel replied.  
"We've had roughly fifteen pods I think." Gohan said thoughtfully. "So that's another fifteen of them coming in pods and fifty soldiers per battle ship, a little over a hundred more to deal with.  
Anyway," he continued, turning back to the teacher fully, "that's the main thing going on right now. In case you're wondering about this other group of aliens, they are the Yardrat imperial guard's seventh battalion, and their here to help."  
"That we are." Sosumi stated. "My men and I are under strict orders from prince Asron to aid lord Gohan any way we can."  
Gohan sighed a little inwardly, he really didn't need the term lord to be thrown around too much right now. In the end it would lead to more questions.  
"Hey!" Sharpner yelled from his place among the other students. "Why don't you guys get Hercule to help with the defence? If these aliens are strong wouldn't he be the best man for the job?"  
At this comment Krillin doubled over in silent laughter and Videl, Twister and Thaw looked amused while Sosumi looked at Gohan questioningly.  
"Let me into your mind for a second Sosumi." Gohan said.  
The Colonel nodded and the Gohan formed a telepathic link with him, quickly explaining the whole Hercule issue. The Cell-games were already well known on planet Yardrat, much of Gohan's past was.  
By the end of Gohan's short explanation Sosumi felt like doubling over in silent laughter himself, but his sense of duty as an officer prevented him from doing so.  
Gohan then turned to Videl, a thought had struck him, but he wanted to know what she thought about the matter before he put his newly formed plan into action.  
Quickly he whispered something in her ear and she grinned and nodded in response. He turned to Sosumi again and whispered with him as well, before placing a hand on the colonel's left shoulder.  
"Grab hold." He told Videl.  
She grabbed his left arm rather confused and Sosumi brought two fingers of his right hand to his forehead. In the next instant the three of them disappeared, leaving a stunned group staring into thin air.  
"What... happened?" Twister asked Krillin.  
"Instant transmission." Krillin replied. "It's a Yardrat technique, take you anywhere you want to go in an instant, as well as anyone touching you. Gohan hasn't had time to learn it yet, so he had Sosumi do it."  
Twister nodded. "So where did they go?"  
"I honestly don't know." Krillin replied. "From what I can sense they're not too far away but I can't quite pinpoint where they are."  
  
Videl was startled, as the world around her seemed to fade for a moment, she hadn't expected that. Then the world reappeared but they weren't on the fields behind the school anymore they were in her father's mansion, on the third floor, where her father was sitting in a chair.  
"Hi dad." She managed to get out, trying to process what had happened.  
"Videl what are you doing here?" Hercule asked.  
"I..." Videl started but he interrupted her.  
"Well it doesn't matter honey your safe here."  
'Oh brother.' Videl thought.  
Gohan whispered in her ear and she nodded.  
"Daddy could you just come over here and say 'Hi' to my friends?" She asked sweetly.  
"Of course." Hercule said, walking towards the group in the dimly lit room and for the first time taking a good look at Gohan and Sosumi. "A- Alien!" He yelled as he noticed the Yardrat's ears and other unusual features.  
Gohan just grabbed hold of Hercule as Sosumi put a hand on his back and Videl did as well. Then Sosumi brought two fingers to his face again and took them back where they'd started.  
  
"Hey look everybody, it's Hercule!" Sharpner yelled as the group of four appeared.  
Krillin looked like he was going to double over again, but a look from Gohan stopped him.  
"Uhm, yeah it's me and..." Hercule was lost for words, but was fortunately spared for the time being as Gohan's communicator beeped.  
"Star here, what's up?" The young demi-Saiyan answered the communicator.  
"Good news first or bad news first?" Bulma asked.  
"Any order will do. I'm not in the mood for games." Gohan replied.  
"Very well. I suppose I would be stressed to if I were you. Anyway, the good news is that we've finally got the sensor grids up again."  
"Alright, and the bad news."  
"The scout probes are still working as well and it looks like we've got two battleships and about fifteen more pods incoming. We can track them when they get to Earth, but it's going to be a tough one."  
"I'm afraid so, I'd already heard those numbers though."  
"How?"  
"Yardrat seventh battalion ITed in, their military intelligence had the same news."  
"I suppose it helps to have friends in high places in alien empires."  
"It does, anyway, tell the others to stay where they are. Krillin's here now, but I'll send him east, they could use some more power there. The Yardrat and I will hold the fort here. Tell everybody to stay sharp. THE three are with me but should things get too hot I'll send them to Yardrat via IT, they should be safe there, at least for a while."  
"Alright, I'll get word to the others, good luck, to Krillin as well."  
"Thanks, talk to you later."  
Krillin looked over to Gohan as the younger man clicked of his communicator.  
"Are you sure you don't need me to stay, you know they'll be aiming for the highest power concentration on approach."  
"I'll be fine, don't worry. I have the Yardrat for back up, but while they'll send both battle ships here without a doubt I have a feeling the pods will disperse upon entering the atmosphere, so I need you to back up the others in the east, that's easily the weakest point."  
"Alright, take care bro."  
"You too. Say 'Hi' to the others for me."  
"Will do bro. Just come out of this with you and the three alive okay, you know the prophecy."  
"I know Krillin, just get going."  
"Alright, I'll contact you through the communicator if there's anything else."  
"Okay. Bye."  
"Bye."  
  
A silence fell at Orange Star High after Krillin left. Gohan was following his friend's progress as well as checking everybody's Ki was where he wanted it to be and going over the plans in his head and most of the others assembled were too stunned to speak. The Yardrat were an exception to that rule of course but as soldiers it was not their place to speak while on duty unless it was needed.  
In the end Sharpner was the one to break the silence.  
"So mister Satan, what's your plan for the battle?"  
"What battle?" The clue-less 'hero' asked.  
"With the aliens!" Sharpner yelled.  
"These aliens?" Hercule asked, looking at the Yardrat.  
"No, the other aliens." Sharpner who actually seemed to have grasped some of it explained.  
"Uhm... well... eh... I..." Hercule sputtered trying to come up with a plan, not so much for the battle as to get out of here.  
"Look there!" Erasa suddenly yelled, startling everyone and directing their attention to the sky above the forest up ahead where the streaks of fire atmospheric entry caused were visible.  
Gohan's Super-Saiyan Vision immediately discerned what was coming.  
"Looks like both battle-ships and five pods as an escort." He told Sosumi.  
"Pretty much standard for the Zeldans." The Colonel commented.  
"Yup, that means the other ten pods have probably dispersed all over, hopefully aiming for the four other groups. Where they'll get a warm welcome."  
"Yes, but I'm wondering why are they taking so long to get down here."  
"Seems like these pods are travelling at exactly the same speed as the battle ships, let's just hope they don't try to land on any buildings."  
"What do we do if they do?"  
"Don't worry I'll throw a Ki-shield when it's needed, but I'd probably have to go to level three to make it work on this scale."  
Sosumi nodded. And then yelled several orders in Yardrat. Causing the battalion of fifty to break up into ten battle groups of five and spread out.  
"Tell your man to fight where and when they can, but if they get overwhelmed get out of there." Gohan said. "I'll take care of it then."  
"We are soldiers. We do not fear death." Sosumi answered.  
"Perhaps not. But your lives may be needed later. I am almost certain they will be. Though you should hopefully be able to stand your ground in fights with equal numbers. I'll try to draw the other fifty. Keep a guard of at least one battle-group near the three at all time."  
"As you wish my lord." Sosumi said before issuing the appropriate orders.  
In the mean time Gohan powered up. Surprisingly, his crown stayed on his head even as he transformed into level 2. Behind him Hercule squealed and seemed to mutter something that included the term Cell-games, but Gohan didn't pay any attention to him.  
After he'd stabilised in level 2 Gohan took to the air, rushing forward to come to a halt above the edge of the woods. As he'd hoped the manoeuvring thrusters on the enemy ships fired as they slightly changed course to stay headed for his location. Their scanners picking up his Ki as their target.  
  
As Gohan had hoped his move caused the alien ships to land in the forest in front of him. As they opened he heard Sosumi's voice shouting in Yardrat, ordering the first three battle groups to form a line near the edge of the forest. That gave Gohan some room to play with. Three battle groups of five Yardrat fighters each should be enough to take care of any stray Zeldans that might escape, and if a large group tried to break out he could always take care of it himself.  
  
Videl, Twister and Thaw could feel the eyes of two Yardrat battle groups on them as they themselves tried to watch the fighting from where they were standing. It wasn't too easy as Gohan was at least 200 yards away from them, fighting in and above the forest, and even the Zeldan defence line was a good 100 yards removed from them.  
To ad to their troubles watching Gohan seemed to disappear and reappear somewhere else in an instant some times, moving to fast for their eyes to see.  
"What's happening?" Videl asked, not really having anyone in particular in mind as she let out the question.  
"They're fighting." Sosumi who was standing nearby answered. "So far lord Gohan has killed 42 of the Zeldans while six have been picked up by our defence line as they were trying to break out. I'll have to get to the third group on the line though, with some reinforcements. They've taken four of the outbreaks and it looks like one of the men is wounded." Suddenly he barked a few orders in Yardrat and five men joined him as he left Videl and the others, heading for the group in question.  
Not a minute later he reappeared.  
"I thought I'd keep you updated." He stated. "This is not yet the time to lead from the front anyway. I need to be back here for a tactical overview, though I doubt our services will be needed much during the rest of this battle. Lord Gohan has already taken out 64 Zeldans."  
A few moments later Gohan suddenly appeared near them as well.  
"That's that last of them." He told Sosumi. "I'll contact the others to see if they're okay. Do you have any injured?"  
"One of my men has two broken bones, other than that a couple of scrapes and bruises, but the new training is paying off, had we faced them a year ago we would have done far worse against the Zeldans."  
"Good, I'm glad to know it's effective." Gohan said. "Now give your wounded man this." He pulled out a senzu bean. "It should completely heal him."  
Videl wanted to ask something but found that before she could Gohan already had his communicator out.  
"Star to Whiz, what's the screen showing? Any high Kis that shouldn't be here?"  
"Whiz here, that's a negative Star, the only thing out of the ordinary are 51 high readings close to you but I assume those belong to the Yardrat."  
"Hai. Now since I've been fighting in uniform this all falls under Yardrat military code. That means that as the ranking officer I have to go see the king in a little while to ask permission for the battle, even though it's already been fought, but before I do, where would you like me to send the ships that are here?"  
"Good question. You've got what? Two battleships and 5 pods there?"  
"Yeah. And a dozen pods from the first attack wave."  
"All right, send them to storage planet three."  
"Good, I'll input the coordinates and set the autopilots. Tell the others to send whatever pods are in their areas there as well."  
"Okay, if anything this has been a good day for our spare parts supply."  
"Yeah, talk to you later, contact the others and see if they have any wounded. If so send them to Dende's. I'll be in touch, I have to do some thinking about where to go from here."  
"Okay, later."  
"Later."  
  
Gohan went about the business of sending off the ships quite unceremoniously. After briefly excusing himself from his friends he went into one of the two battleships and programmed in the coordinates for the target planet. Then he made it connect to the other battleship and the nearby pods to give out the same orders before putting it, and the other ships with it on a 30 seconds delayed take off program and getting out of there, rejoining the others just in time to see the ships leave the atmosphere.  
"Where are they going?" Videl asked.  
"Storage planet three." Gohan replied.  
"I heard that already, but what does it mean?" Videl asked.  
"Without going into too many technicalities, Z-squad is a fully sovereign organisation, and we have several uninhabited planets under our control, some, mostly those with climates that while inhospitable can still support human life, we use to store supplies, and captured enemy ships. Because we can't be bothered to name them all we usually just use numbered designations, SP or storage planet 1, SP 2 etc. we currently have 4 storage planets. And 10 unmanned observation posts."  
"Gohan if you don't mind my asking, what exactly is your position in Z-squad?" Twister, who was listening along with Thaw, wanted to know. "You seem to be the youngest there, but the others seem to take orders from you."  
"Well I am the youngest member, and yes the others do take orders from me. Technically we're a democracy, which means they re-elect me every three years. Because quite simply, I'm the strongest, and therefore the only one that can keep everyone in line and I can guarantee you that some of the people I work with need to be kept in line every once in a while. But Sosumi and I really have to go now, we'll be back in a while."  
His friends nodded and Gohan flew off, followed closely by Sosumi.  
  
As he flew Gohan took some time to get into the right mindset. He would be playing at least four parts in the upcoming conversation. First of all he would be a soldier, a general of the Yardrat Imperial Guard. But he would also be a prince of the Yardrat Empire, which was similar but different. Next to those two he was also a citizen of Earth, and last but not least the leader of Z-squad and the galactic alliance that Z-squad was just starting to form.  
The King had very little real power of course, the local governments held the real power on most fronts, the king only controlled the Royal military, but even that went through the council of representatives elected by local governments.[1] However the king did have great power over public opinion, and more importantly he held the title of world ruler, which meant he was the one Yardrat military code required Gohan to see.  
  
Once they'd arrived at the palace Gohan and Sosumi gave their names to the guard. The poor man had looked like he was going to faint when the calmly flew up to him, and looked even more so when they announced who they were.  
He walked inside where they could hear him talking to someone there and then someone else came out, looking rather pale as he guided them into the building and to the throne room. There he stepped inside, rather shakily to announce them and apparently his nerves hadn't influenced his voice because Gohan and Sosumi could hear him loud and clear outside the door.  
"Your Majesty. Introducing Colonel Sosumi, leader of the seventh battalion of the Yardrat Imperial Guard and Lord Gohan, Prince of the Yardrat Empire, General of the Imperial Guard and Leader of Z-squad."  
The door was opened and the two of them walked in, Gohan falling into the one knee salute a few yards from the throne as Sosumi stood behind him.  
"Your Majesty." He said, his eyes fixed firmly at the ground as was customary. "I am Lord Gohan and I would like to introduce to you my companion, Colonel Sosumi, head of the Imperial Guard's seventh battalion."  
"Please rise Lord Gohan." The king responded. "I have many questions, so I do apologise if I violate any of your customs but I would like to ask them."  
Gohan got up again. "Do not concern yourself with customs your majesty. Please ask what you will. Though before this meeting is done I must ask something of you as well."  
"Very well. Ask me when you feel the time is right. For now I would be grateful if you could explain who you are and why you are here on Earth."  
"Of course." Gohan replied. "For me that answer is simple, I was born here on Earth and consider myself an Earthling, even though technically I'm only half Human and half Saiyan.  
Now explaining why Sosumi is here is somewhat trickier. That story starts years ago, while I was out in space. Why I was there is not important now, but I ended up saving the life of Prince Asron, the crown prince of the Yardrat Empire. According to Yardrat customs that meant his sister was to be offered to me in marriage, but at the time I was only 13 and she was only 2 of our years old. Not a marriage I desired. The only way out of it that wouldn't be an insult was the brother oath, which I took with Asron. This made me his brother, but also gave me the part of his brother in the family, making me the second prince of the Yardrat Empire, and more importantly making it impossible for me to marry his sister Nasya as she was now my sister as well.  
Now to get back to the present. I'm sure your majesty has heard of the battle that took place in Satan city as well as several other skirmishes world wide." The king nodded and Gohan went on. "Those were battles between an organisation I represent, known as Z-squad, and an Alien race known as Zeldans. The Yardrat's intelligence service found out about this planned assault and so Colonel Sosumi and the seventh battalion were send here to aid us, or more precisely to aid me."  
"I see." The king replied. "I must say I'm not all together surprised by the existence of Aliens. I still remember an incident a dozen or so years ago where two of them landed on Earth. But all of that is shrouded in mystery, at least for me, perhaps you might be able to shed some more light on that subject as well." He looked at Gohan with a piercing stare making the demi-Saiyan feel as though he was being looked through rather than at.  
Slowly, contemplating what he would say he nodded before proceeding to explain just a little of that event and some other things, but the big shock came later. When the King brought up the Cell-games.  
"Perhaps this question my surprise you." The monarch stated. "But I want to know, do you know what really happened at the Cell-games? I may not be a fighter myself but I've seen enough in my day to know that Hercule's story has to be completely made up."  
Gohan again found himself slowly nodding before he briefly explained the truth of the matter.  
The rest of the discussion touched on a wide range of issues, most of them to do with galactic politics and in the end Gohan left knowing the King would do anything in his power to bring Earth into the alliance should there ever be a need to do so.  
  
It took a while for those left at OSH to shake of their dazed state after Gohan and Sosumi flew off. The only thing breaking the silence was Hercule occasionally muttering things like: "Just like the Cell-games." "So much stronger than me." Or "Shouldn't have lied."  
After about fifteen minutes of this situation Sharpner broke the silence.  
"What do you mean mr. Satan?" He asked as Hercule just finished a 'shouldn't have lied'.  
"I, eh, well, uh, I mean uhm..." Hercule sputtered.  
"Yes what do you mean by that?" Mister Smythe the history teacher asked.  
"Well I uh," Hercule continued to sputter in vain before suddenly figuring out a way out. "I have to go, I have to go home to see if there are more aliens coming." And with that the 'champ' was off running like there was no tomorrow.  
  
The group just fell into silence again until Gohan and Sosumi suddenly reappeared, having used IT to get back.  
"Alright." Gohan said to Sosumi. "That went well."  
"Yes." The Colonel agreed. "Now shall my men and I go back to Yardrat or does your lordship have any further use for us?"  
"Send back your men. But stay yourself." Gohan said. "I may need you to get there myself."  
"Very well my lord." Sosumi replied before shouting a few orders in Yardrat.  
"Alright." Gohan said as the Yardrat troops ITed out of there. "Now let's see if there's any news." He took out his communicator. "Star to all units, repeat Star to all units, come in please."  
"Whiz, signing in."  
"Prince, standing by."  
"Disc, 'sup bro."  
"Guard, standing by."  
"Bandit, read you loud and clear."  
"Ma Jr., standing by."  
"18, standing by."  
"Emperor, ready to receive."  
"439-base, standing by, are you okay?"  
"Yeah I'm fine." Gohan replied, smiling a little at the concern in his mother's voice. "Everybody else get through okay as well?" He asked.  
"Yeah, I did an inventory like you asked." Bulma replied. "No injuries to speak of, couple of bruises maybe."  
"Okay, now I've been doing some thinking everybody."  
"Yes?"  
"I think I'll be going to Yardrat for a while, with the three. I need access to their ancient texts because of a ritual I may have to perform."  
Videl, Twister and Thaw who had walked up to Gohan gasped at the last statement, he was actually considering taking them to an other planet, and treating the whole thing like it wasn't any more special than a vacation abroad.  
  
Gohan chuckled slightly before continuing. "Has anybody got anything I need to do before I go?"  
"Not really, but you do need to inform your friends' parents." Chi-Chi said. "After all I wouldn't like it if you just went without telling me."  
"Yes mom. Anybody else got anything?"  
A silence followed.  
"Guess not." Gohan said. "Okay then, we'll keep in touch through the hyper-speed channels."  
A chorus of 'okay's and 'later's followed and the line went dead.  
"All right you three." Gohan said, turning to his friends. "We need to explain to your parents, though in your father's case Videl, that may be a lost cause. Also all three of you keep in mind that in the end we're not asking permission, this is going to happen, even if your parents don't like it, we're just letting them know."  
  
End of Chapter Four  
  
[1] I have no idea of the governmental structure of the Dragon Ball world, so I made something up. The King (blue cat person we see during the Cell-games) rules the whole world, but has little real power. Beneath him are the local governments they operate on the same level as countries in our world, and beneath them are the local sub-governments who see to the day to day running of things at the low level.  
  
Please Review. 


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